


Beating

by Dayja



Category: His Dark Materials (TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Abduction, Alternate Universe, Father-Daughter Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Non Consensual Daemon Touching, Other, Torture, aromantic Asexual Lee Scoresby
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-02
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:21:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 19
Words: 64,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25024585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dayja/pseuds/Dayja
Summary: Lee Scoresby prides himself on his fighting skills, even when the only weapon left him is his voice.  But what happens when he is ambushed and even that is taken away?  Will Iorek and Lyra be able to save him?  Or will it be them needing to be saved; and how can he and Hester manage when they've already been beaten?
Relationships: Iorek Byrnison & Lee Scoresby, Lee Scoresby & Hester, Lyra Belacqua & Iorek Byrnison, Lyra Belacqua & Lee Scoresby
Comments: 47
Kudos: 115





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a sort of AU and sort of not. I suppose, imagine if a Lee Scoresby and a Lyra and a Iorek all existed in a world very similar to the one in the books, but this is not the Lyra destined by fate. And since alternate worlds exist in the books and it is suggested alternate versions of people may also exist, why not them? So some aspects of their lives are the same and some are different. This Lyra still went out and still helped Iorek regain his throne and still became like a daughter to Lee…but she won’t be destined to journey to other worlds or need quite the same level of sacrifice for her involved in the books. Which is a long-winded way of saying ‘Lee has basically become her dad and Iorek is like an uncle and they are all currently together for reasons’. And this Lyra does not have her alethiometer, which is a pity, but I suppose anyone who has finished the series can guess why. So…on to the story.
> 
> Warnings: Non-con (but no rape) and allusions to pedophilia and bestiality though no actual pedophilia or bestiality. Also quite a bit of violence. Quite possibly death.

Being beaten was not pleasant, not in the sense of losing and even moreso when the beating was literal. Losing a fight smarted a man’s pride but having the fight taken away and just being forced to take the pain without any chance of hitting back could flay a man’s pride to ribbons.

Lee Scoresby was no stranger to pain or to fighting. He had made an art of using other people’s smallness against them; he knew how to win fights, no matter how rough or dirty, and even when he lost the fight, when he limped away, licking the blood from his lips, squinting through his one good eye, he still counted himself among the winners. Because his fists were bruised as much as his ribs, and he was free and alive and ‘ _you shoulda seen the other guy’_. Never mind that the ‘other guy’ might not be so bad off in appearance. Lee Scoresby knew ways of fighting that left bruises where they couldn’t be seen.

And when it was _that_ kind of fighting, when it was battle rather than brawl, he knew how to use a gun, a knife, a stone, a boot, how to aim to wound. How to aim to kill. 

People sometimes looked at Hester and thought ‘rabbit’ and applied every negative connotation to the man that went with the daemon. They thought he would be easily cowed, weak. They thought he would be _timid_. But rabbits are not timid so much as they are survivors. And, even more to the point, Hester was not a rabbit at all; she was an arctic hare. The thing to know about arctic hares is that they are at home when they are solitary and they are at home when they are in a crowd and the mothers protect their children fiercely and they are fast and they are free.

They are also the natural prey of arctic wolves.

The first man’s wolf to lunge at Hester got a powerful kick that near broke the daemon’s jaw, the second a swipe of her claws, unexpected in a herbivore, drawing blood. But wolves hunt in packs and it was the third daemon that managed to nab her.

Up to then, Lee could not honestly have said he was winning the fight; his lip was already bleeding, his back was bruised and torn under the force of a now shattered chair (his chair, darn it, he had _liked_ that chair) and a blow to his side had felt rather like being caught between an anvil and a mallet. But he was doing better than the man now groaning on the floor, or the one lying still, and all three of those still standing had some mark, big or small, to show Lee Scoresby knew how to fight back. Lee’s blood was singing in his veins, high on adrenalin, and he did not enjoy fighting but he did enjoy the rush that came with a dirty knockdown brawl.

They fought best, Hester and Lee, when they saw it coming and Hester could take a defensible position, someplace small and hard to reach, where she could watch his back or shout advise: “Behind you! Knife! Use the chair! Ooh, stop letting them hit you, Lee, get up! That’s it, hit ‘em where it hurts!”

Only the ambush had come when they were slightly drunk and thought themselves alone. Thought themselves perfectly safe. And Hester was not shouting out advise, she was fending off teeth and claws. This left Lee feeling divided and vulnerable, no, not _feeling_ , he _was_ divided and vulnerable, but he fought because there was nothing else to do, and he fought well. Right up to the point the daemon had Hester in her jaws.

The shock of it was enough to throw Lee when he went to take a swing with the remains of a chair leg. And it was still three on one. No, four on one; the man groaning on the floor had dragged himself up when Lee was distracted.

The man managed to grab Lee by his arms, and Lee was a seasoned fighter, he knew what to do about holds like that, but teeth were drawing blood on his daemon and she shouted, not even words, just _pain_ , and the other three closed in, and one just hit him, in the stomach, taking his breath, and one had some rope, and, almost before he knew he was caught, Lee’s hands were bound and his feet were knocked out from under him and the fight was over and he had definitely lost.

They could have killed them both then and there and left the body for his companions to find. Bindings suggested they wanted something different though. So, no matter what kind of idiot Hester called him afterwards, Lee felt it moderately safe to run his mouth.

“Mighty proud of yourselves, are you, jumping an unarmed man and his rabbit,” he drawled out, going for utter unconcern, just as though he hadn’t been soundly roughed up and then savagely bound. The ropes were tight enough to worry over circulation if he hadn’t had bigger worries. Like the men doing the tying.

“Shut up, Lee,” Hester growled. Lee wasn’t entirely sure if she was angry about him antagonizing their attackers or calling her a rabbit. Knowing her, probably both. They hadn’t bothered to tie her up either; it’s not like she could run away with Lee bound as he was and her bound to him. Neither knew whether to be pleased they’d overlooked her or insulted.

“Don’t worry about them,” Lee told Hester, pretending to not know why else she might be upset, “Sure as sure, they be stupider than a cart of donkey’s dung to go hunting in an armored bear’s camp.” He finished by spitting blood from his lip at the feet of his nearest attacker. Instead of rounding on him with his fist or boot, as Lee rather expected and had half braced himself for, the man just looked down at him and smirked.

“The bear en’t here now, is he? He left with the girl. En’t no one coming to save you now. And when they do come, we’ll be ready.”

“You en't touching them,” Lee answered, the sheer icy touch of pure fear making him lose all of his contrived calm, because they were not going to touch his friends. “You sure en’t.”

“We sure are,” the man answered, still smirking. It was the man he had left groaning on the ground. There was no sign of groaning now, not even a limp. He must have been faking. Lee was usually better than that to be taken in by such an obvious dupe. Then the smirking man turned to his companions, who seemed divided between glaring at Lee and Hester and helping the man Lee had rendered unconscious. There was no faking _there_ at least.

“Bring them,” said the man. He was clearly in charge of the operation. Lee wondered if he could use that.

They hadn’t bound Lee’s legs, an oversight the Texan fully intended to use, but it turned out the only reason was to force him to walk himself and he never got the chance to teach them their folly.

One of their wolves lunged at Hester, who naturally, still being free, dodged away, using Lee as a sort of shield knowing the wolf wouldn’t want to touch him. No daemon would touch a human who wasn’t theirs, just as no human would touch someone else’s daemon. This went on almost comically for several minutes until the man in charge tired of watching. Then he walked over, sighed in annoyance, and kicked Lee in the ribs so hard Lee began to rethink how badly they wanted him alive, because that could easily have ruptured something inside him. Maybe it had. At the very least, Lee was inclined to think his ribs cracked.

It also fulfilled the man’s intentions, stunning Lee’s daemon long enough for the wolf to grab her up in her jaws, tight enough to hurt but not to kill.

Making Lee walk after that was as simple as carrying his daemon forward. They did it before Lee even had a chance to stand, still reeling from the kick and trying to remember how to breathe, when the pain of the stretch between him and Hester dragged at him. It still took him almost a minute to get his feet under him. No one helped him up. The leader smirked, amused, and Hester cursed. Lee would have liked to curse himself, but it was just about all he could do to breathe and get to his feet and anything else was beyond him.

They kept the distance between Lee and Hester painful for the entirety of the walk, never letting him near enough to ease it. Lee fell four times, unable to properly balance himself on the rough, terrain with his arms bound and being sore and in pain besides. He fell hard, equally unable to catch himself and no one did it for him. At least once he fell because someone’s feet tripped him up. They would pause then and watch him try to get back to his feet, as awkward as a newborn calf, laughing and jeering, and the wolf with Hester almost seemed to be playing, the way she would move towards him, then away, tugging at his bond.

They got where they were going eventually.

It looked like an outpost of some kind; there was a high wooden fence surrounding three wooden buildings with an open bit in the middle. Lee glanced at the fence scornfully as he limped through the gate; that would be no barrier to Iorek that was certain. Even Lyra alone could have found her way past that flimsy fortification.

But he didn’t want to think on Lyra coming to his rescue. He barely cared to think of Iorek playing the knight to his damsel in distress. For one, it was a bit humiliating. For another, his captor had all but said he knew about Lee’s companions and had plans for them. Those plans Lee did not know but they did not bode well.

Still, just because those men were good enough to get the jump on Lee, five against one (ten against two, really, with the daemons), didn’t mean they were prepared for an armored bear, no matter what they thought. And no one was prepared for Lyra.

Lee was made to go into one of the buildings. It was little more than a shack, dark inside and filled in one corner with barrels and sacks. It smelled unpleasant, part barracks and part fish and part burning oil, the cheap kind.

It wasn’t just a storage shed though; there were metal manacles with chains attached to a post near the center of the room. They dragged Lee over to them as soon as he crossed the door and they attached them to his feet and his wrists before cutting away his bindings. Hester was put into a cage, one that would certainly have held a real hare but would be laughably easy for an intelligent daemon to get out of. It wasn’t even locked, just latched. She made no move to try though, not with their captors still surrounding them on high alert. Instead she looked towards Lee and sat in her cage, wary and waiting. They put them just far apart enough to feel the tug, but not quite so far as to be a torture. Lee supposed they didn’t want him completely broken or dead. Not yet, anyway.

It would help Lee to figure out what they had grabbed him for if he knew who they were. The outpost could suggest a military branch, or it could be borrowed. They could be bandits, or official soldiers, though the lack of uniforms suggested the former to be more likely. 

“I supposed you’re wondering what we brought you here for,” said the smirking man who Lee had mentally dubbed ‘Captain’ in his mind. Whether he was a captain or not, he was certainly in charge.

“Not hard to guess,” answered Lee. “You’re here to die.”

The Captain raised an eyebrow while the two men who had followed them in stared at Lee. One looked nervous, the younger one. The Captain looked amused. The other looked annoyed. Lee had a talent for bringing out mixed emotions in others.

“Is that so?” asked the Captain.

“Sure is,” Lee answered. “You ever seen an armored bear in battle? Their jaws can crush a man’s skull. And their claws are sharp as razors, six to a foot. They can rip and they can crush and they can slice. They’re bigger than you can imagine. And they’re smart. They can smell a trick a mile off. So what else is a man to think when a group of men are stupid enough to steal into an armored bear’s camp and make a mess? You want to die.”

“We know all about that sick little family you’ve got going on,” said the Captain, still smirking. Lee was beginning to hate that smirk. He’d put up with a good deal of pain if it meant wiping that smirk off the man’s face. “A man and a beast together out raising a little girl. We’ll be doing the girl a favor taking her away from that. Do tell me…do you take him or let him take you? Does the little girl watch or join in?”

If he were hoping to either shame or anger Lee with his implications he mostly failed. Mostly, because suggesting either Lee or Iorek would do something so grotesque as to harm a child was hideous, not to mention threatening (because if the Captain could _think_ it, could he _do_ it?), but Lee managed to clamp down his sudden anger and focus on the other insinuations.

“Jealous?” he asked with a bit of a smirk of his own. “That little thing your lover uses not big enough for you?” And if that suggested that the insinuations were true and Lee was having sex with Iorek, well, nothing shameful for two consenting adults to have a bit of fun. They weren’t; Iorek was not attracted to humans in the slightest and Lee didn’t seem to be attracted to _anyone_ as far as he could tell, but if their love had gone in that direction Lee would never have been ashamed. And his words finally did what he had been hoping, turning the Captain’s smirk into a snarl.

Lee braced himself, expecting more punches. But the Captain did not move, just stood and looked at him with such fierce hatred it was almost worse than a fist.

“I’d watch my mouth if I was you,” the Captain said. “We have ways of shutting you up.”

“Now that, I’d like to see,” said Hester from her cage, and Lee knew perfectly well what she was doing and did not appreciate it in the least. The Captain’s wolf growled at Hester, a deep rumble in the back of her throat.

“Shall we gag him, sir?” demanded one of the other men. The Captain seemed to consider this for a moment.

“You got a gag for the rabbit?” he asked. The man looked confused for a moment and shook his head.

“Then not much point if you mean to keep them both quiet. Still…might as well. He won’t need to talk.”

Lee did not like being chained up. He absolutely hated being gagged. It was taking away his final method for fighting back.

“I don’t think it will do a lick of good,” Hester said, knowing perfectly well how Lee hated gags, and hoping to distract them from following through. “Lee can talk more with just his eyes than a priest on Sunday.”

“Perhaps a blindfold as well, then,” said the Captain, and Hester lowered her ears, thinking she had made things worse.

The gag they used was an old rag, and not particularly clean; it tasted of sweat and grease and if Lee had it in his power to spit it out he would have, but the man knew his way around a gag. If he weren’t just gagged, Lee would likely have made comments about that. Hester obliged him anyway.

“Get a lot of practice with that?” Hester asked. “No wonder you all are so bent on getting a bear to sex up if that’s what you get up to.” 

Lee had never loved Hester more. And had never so much wished she would shut up in his life. Whatever had been said about a blindfold, no one made a move to apply one. The Captain looked at Lee, then at Hester.

“I did warn you we have ways of silencing you both,” he said, almost casually, not smirking, not angry. Then he walked over to Hester’s cage, flipped open the top latch, reached in and grabbed her by the ears.

Lee screamed, loud even through the gag, and Hester went absolutely still from the shock of it.

No one touched other people’s daemons. It simply was not done. Not even to one’s enemies. Not even in the thick of battle, when any advantage could mean the difference between life or death.

The other men looked uncomfortable in the extreme, but no one said anything, no one stopped him. The Captain pulled Hester right out of the cage still holding her by the ears, and that was uncomfortable, painful even, Lee could sense that underneath, but that was _nothing_ to the sheer wrongness of feeling another person’s hands on his Hester.

It was not pain. It was violation, as surely as if the Captain had ripped Lee open and pushed his hand inside. His hands did not belong on Lee’s daemon. If it weren’t for the gag, Lee would be screaming obscenities. How could the other men, the other _daemons_ , just stand there and let that happen?

Hester was not gagged, but she was in shock, a deep sort of shock that momentarily robbed her of all senses. This was followed by desperation and she twisted violently, struggling to kick, claw, bite, twist her way free. She was at a disadvantage though; hares are not meant to be held by the ears and she couldn’t quite swing her body around to attack his hand. He was holding her out, away from his body, so she was able to do a lot of wriggling but wasn’t gaining any purchase to attack.

The Captain looked at the wrathful hare in his hand, then at Lee, gagged but desperate, shouting wordless pleas as he struggled against the manacles holding him in place. The expression on the Captain’s face was not anger, or hatred, or pleasure. He looked thoughtful. And with that thoughtful expression, as if he just wanted to see what would happen, he took a step backwards away from Lee.

The bond had been taut before; Hester too far away to be comfortable but not so far to hurt. One step backwards, still being touched, was horrible. Two steps was agony. Three steps and Hester found her voice.

“No, no, stop, please, you’re killing us!” she shouted. The Captain took one more step and then just stood there, holding Hester and looking at Lee, that thoughtful expression on his face, like a scientist curious to see a reaction.

Lee was almost thankful for the gag, because if he weren’t gagged, he would be _begging_. He could take pain, had taken pain many times before, but this was something else entirely, this was obscenity and violation, this was tearing something inside him that was never meant to be torn, and he screamed, and sobbed, and struggled, and for long minutes, the Captain just stood there and watched.

Then, after those long minutes, he walked forward and forward, right up to Lee. Lee sagged in relief and turmoil because he was _still_ touching Hester, but Hester was close, Hester was not torn away.

“Let me tell you what is going to happen now,” said the Captain in a calm, reasonable voice. “Your bear is going to come for you. We both know it. And we are going to kill it. Because we are not afraid of doing nasty things when necessary. And we are going to hurt you until you beg for your own death to follow him. Only we won’t. We will keep you and we will keep the girl, and the girl won’t run because we have you and you won’t run because you won’t be able to. And we will get money from the girl’s father. You know, her actual father, not the pretend father you try to be. And maybe we’ll let you go with her. And maybe we won’t. And no, I did not have to tell you all my plans. You think I’m a stupid man, giving everything away. But you aren’t going to tell. And that will hurt too, I think. Knowing and not being able to stop anything.”

And then he turned away, went back to the cage, and dropped Hester inside. She huddled, trembling and small and weak as he redid the latch. Then the Captain turned to the other men.

“Watch them both.” He said. “If the rabbit speaks, you have my permission to do whatever it takes to silence it. Beat it. Beat the man. Just don’t kill.”

And then he turned and went towards the door.

Hester looked towards Lee and neither said a word, one because he couldn’t and one because she daren’t. The Captain paused at the door, then turned and said, “Oh, and do blindfold him.” And then he left.

Lee trembled, alone, without his voice, without his sight, with Hester too far away, and did his best to hold himself together. 

Iorek and Lyra were going to come for him. He wasn’t sure if he felt hope at that…or fear.


	2. Chapter 2

“Just wait ‘til I tell Roger how I rode an elk!” said Lyra, exuberant. “He en’t going to believe a word of it.”

She had taken to saying that a lot; not about riding elks, which was a new and, to Iorek’s mind, not particularly good turn. He could have done without that little adventure. Lee trusted him with Lyra, completely and utterly, and Iorek had come far too close to failing that trust for his own comfort. Rather, Lyra had taken to talking all about what she was going to tell Roger when she saw him next. Lee, Iorek and Hester had talked it over, when the child was distracted in lighthearted play with her daemon, in their sight but distant enough to not be able to listen in.

“It’s homesickness, sure enough,” Lee had said. “Her first time away from home, but no family to speak of, of course it’s her friend she thinks of. Closest thing she has to family.”

“But she has parents, Lee,” Hester pointed out, cautious as ever of Lee’s heart, knowing how attached he had become and feeling she needed to be the voice of reason.

“On paper,” Lee agreed with a shrug, giving Hester an easy grin as though to say ‘what are you worried for, I know what’s what’. Hester was not convinced of this in the slightest. They were hired in the first place to bring Lyra to her father. Her real father, the one who gave her half her looks and her surname and who was waiting to receive her at his laboratory in Nova Zembla. At first, Lyra had chattered endlessly about how wonderful her father was and all he knew and all he did and all he was but precious little about anything he had ever done with her or for her. And then there was the little side trip to free Iorek (okay, big side trip, further north than they were ever meant to go. In fact, Lee fully intended on taking Lyra to her father first and returning for Iorek, only the girl had sensed something was wrong and wrangled the story out of Hester, and the next thing they knew she had half a plan formed for freeing him, and after all the city where Iorek was rumored to be was not so far off track.). And then there was a storm and instead of going east they were blown north. And then there were the cliff ghasts. And Lee lost Lyra, and Iorek and near lost himself. 

So they were rather late getting Lyra to her father, but as near as Iorek could tell both Lyra and Lee were perfectly happy to wander the wilderness together. It did not help that the winds kept being out of favor, and now they were in Lapland and it looked like they would be there for a while yet. Iorek accompanied them in part from feeling indebted to Lyra and wanting to see her safely to her journey’s end, in part through pure friendship to all of them, and in part because home had become a stranger’s stronghold and still felt it even now that he was its lord. And over time, Lyra had stopped talking about her father and started talking about Roger and seeing Roger and how Mr. Scoresby and Hester and Iorek would love meeting Roger and Salcilia when they took her and Pan home after her visit with Lord Asriel.

None of the men, nor even Hester, had the heart to point out there was no guarantee her father would send her back anytime soon, let alone with the very people who had gotten her so hopelessly lost in the wilderness long past when she was due to meet him. If it were up to Lee, Iorek rather thought they would never part. If they were all bears, things would be much simpler. Lee could just ask Lyra if she wanted him for a dad, and if she said yes, that would be that; wouldn’t matter who her old father or mother were. But humans had all these rules about that sort of thing, and they would most certainly side with her rich and influential parents and not with a near penniless aeronaut. So now they were all enjoying the trip and avoiding thinking about its conclusion. And they needed to eat, which meant they needed to hunt. Normally, Iorek would go alone, but Lyra was interested in everything and had begged to be allowed to come. She now felt the hunt had been a great success, small mishaps and all.

“Only,” Lyra babbled on, still happy with their little adventure with the elk, “Maybe it’s best we don’t tell Mr. Scoresby about it.”

“He’d never let us go hunting with Iorek again,” Pan agreed, sharing Lyra’s exuberance in the form of a robin, flitting from Lyra’s shoulder, to the haunch of the elk now laid over Iorek’s back, then to Iorek’s head. Pan never seemed to mind touching Iorek any more than he would mind touching Hester, and Lyra had seen many times Hester nuzzle up to the bear too. She supposed bears were closer to daemon than to human, being an animal, so the taboo did not apply.

They were returning more slowly than they had set out; not so much because of the burden Iorek now carried, the prize of their successful hunt which was of little consequence to a bear of his strength despite the elk’s great size, but because Lyra, both naturally reluctant to ride with a dead animal and buoyant from the success so as to make her want to skip about, was now walking and forced their procession to slow to her gait.

They were still about a twenty minute walk from where they left Lee at their camp at Lyra’s pace, when Iorek paused. Whatever he had been about to say concerning Lyra’s elk riding and whether Lee needed to know of it or not (not, he was inclined to think), was silenced.

“What is it?” Lyra asked, sensing the change of mood. Pan alit on her shoulder, transforming seamlessly into a ferret.

“Something is wrong,” said Iorek. “I smell men, strange men and…and blood…”

“From our camp?” Lyra asked, grasping at Pan and holding him to her heart. 

Iorek growled, low and deep. “You will wait here,” he said. “Climb up into this tree and do not come down until I return to get you.”

“What? No! I want to help!” Lyra argued. Iorek, however, did not give her the chance. He had already started to run, elk and all, and there was no chance for Lyra to ever catch up to that, not if she ran until her heart burst. She ran anyway, until Pan flew at her face in the form of a bird, distracting her into stopping.

“Lyra!” said Pan, a badger now, heavy and unbudging, “You heard what he said. We should climb a tree and wait.”

“We can’t just…just wait!” Lyra said, aghast. “That’s…that’s Mr. Scoresby back in the camp and Iorek said there was blood and…and we can’t just…we can’t…”

“It’s Mr. Scoresby,” Pan said, saying through tone alone that there was no need to worry for him; “If there’s blood it’s probably those bad men who are doing the bleeding. Anyway, Iorek will go and see and he will come back for us and if we run off maybe he won’t find us for an age and we’ll make things _worse_.”

“But Pan,” Lyra said, full of tears and passion and fear, “It’s Mr. Scoresby!”

“We’re close to camp now,” Pan said. “Let’s climb a tree and perhaps we’ll be high enough to see what is happening.”

Lyra accepted that more readily than simply abandoning Mr. Scoresby and Iorek, and she looked about to find the tallest tree in the forest. Getting into it was rather more difficult; the branches started high and Lyra was a child, and small for her age besides. Pan helped though, becoming the biggest, most solid warthog he could manage and giving her a boost up, then flitting up as a bird and finally joining her as a monkey once she was to the first branch. After that, the climb was no difficulty at all for such seasoned climbers, though they were more used to the unyielding stone of buildings than the swaying of branches.

She went as high as she dared, and then Pan flew higher still, as high as they could bear, and looked out with hawk eyes. Lyra looked out too, but to her dismay she found that she still could not see much because the other trees were in the way, though she looked and looked in the direction she thought their camp must be for any sign or battle.

“I see something, Lyra!” Pan said, having managed, barely, to crest the top of the tree before the strain had become too great to go further. It was a risk, because a sudden change in the air could send a bird reeling, up and away, or down, and neither could afford a great stretch or a fall, but both felt it worth it, for Mr. Scoresby and Hester.

“Be careful, Pan,” Lyra said, and then, “What do you see?”

“I wish I could go higher,” Pan said, staring hard, going sideways to try and get a better view. “I see Iorek. He’s at the camp. He’s…he’s looking at something.”

“And Mr. Scoresby?” Lyra asked, “And Hester?”

“I don’t…I don’t see them,” Pan answered. 

And then there was a gust of wind.

Pan felt it pull on him even as his bond to Lyra pulled the other way, and Lyra cried out, almost falling as she _reached_ for him. But she did not fall, and Pan dropped, not to the ground, but to the upper branch of the tree and held on until the gust was finished. Then Pan changed into a monkey again and clambered down to Lyra’s side.

“That was close,” he said. “I did not like that, Lyra.” And she held him to her heart with one hand, the other still clinging to the tree, feeling his heartbeat against hers.

“You didn’t see them at all?” Lyra asked, once they had calmed again. “Not…not a body or…anything?” There was no need to clarify who ‘them’ was.

“No bodies,” Pan answered. “They en’t in the camp.”

In the camp, Iorek was coming to much the same conclusion. Lee Scoresby and Hester had been there, and there had been a battle, one Iorek could read as plain as if someone had written it out in words for him to know. Lee and Hester had been surprised by five men with wolf daemons, and they had fought and felled one…maybe two, but that one got up again and the other did not…but they had fallen in the end and there was blood. And maybe some of it was the strange men’s but some was around where Lee had sat. The camp was wrecked too, in part from the battle but in part, Iorek suspected, just from meanness. They hadn’t spent a lot of time at it, though; Lee’s instruments for instance were still tucked away unharmed, or no more harmed than they had been from the crash. There was a reason they were making their way on paw and foot, at least until they reached the next town where repairs or replacements could be found. Chairs had been smashed though, and their supplies flung about and slashed through.

Iorek took the time to study this, because the more he knew of his enemy the better prepared he would be, and he began to think there was some method to the destruction. This wasn’t destruction for the meanness of it, or not just to be mean; the destroyer was looking for something. Or someone.

They had nothing of value for bandits to steal, not if they didn’t want Lee’s instruments which were worth something. Not if they hadn’t wanted the thing of immense value Iorek had left tucked away in the safety of the camp. It was still there, Iorek’s armor, left behind because he had been on a hunt, not to battle. Iorek was relieved to find it complete, though it was not untouched. Whatever valuables the man was looking for (and it was a single man, the others had gone a different direction, with Lee), he hadn’t cared enough to take the armor. An attempt had been made to harm it; The sealskin used to hold it when he was not wearing it had been sliced through, but the armor itself was untouched. It was likely too heavy for a single man to drag away, and too tough for his weapons to harm, and whoever it was seemed to know they hadn’t the time to do anything else.

Now Iorek was torn on what to do next. His heart said to follow after Lee and free him from his captors and avenge him his pain (his death, if necessary). But he had left Lyra in a tree, and those men had been searching for something, maybe for _someone_ , and the child had a warrior’s heart and he could not see her staying put all the while he took to track his friend. Even if he did trust her to stay in the tree all that time, and he did not, he did not trust her to remain unfound while unguarded. You cannot trick a bear, and this entire setup had the feel of a trap, traps within traps. Someone meant for him to track Lee. They wanted him without his armor, or perhaps to take the time to fix it, time he did not have. Time was their advantage, every delay more time to set their trap. They wanted him angry. They wanted him to go after his friend. And if he did so, he would be playing their game.

He was going to go after Lee anyway. Those men had hurt his armor (or the sealskin anyway; they clearly _wanted_ to hurt his armor) and deserved vengeance for that. They had hurt his friend. Those men were dead.

But he wasn’t going to run stupidly into their trap like the unthinking beast they seemed to consider him. And he wasn’t going to leave Lyra alone up a tree with just Pan. Besides, the child had a warrior’s heart and a silver tongue. Bears did not see youth as a barrier to doing great things. They protected their young but they did not shelter them.

So Iorek made sure he understood what to make of the destruction in their camp, and then put on his helmet, and the rest of his armor, then turned and ran back towards the child.

He found her easily, and sooner than he should have. She had obeyed in climbing a tree but not the tree he had told her to climb.

“Iorek!” she said, already almost down; she had seen him coming. “Iorek, Pan said Mr. Scoresby isn’t in the camp and it’s all in ruins.”

“On my back, child,” said Iorek, and he stood up taller so she could climb on directly from the branch she was sitting on. She did without question, familiar enough with his armor to find her seat, and almost before she was settled they were moving.

“What has become of Mr. Scoresby and Hester?” Lyra asked as they ran.

Iorek told her all he had found in the camp, leaving nothing out, not even the blood. They returned to the camp and started after the footprints at once.

“They have him walking,” Iorek said, looking closely, “Though I cannot think why he did not refuse.”

“Oh, they must have Hester, of course, and are using her to make him go,” said Lyra, who saw quicker being more used to daemons than Iorek.

“Yes, I see now, there are no hare prints at all,” Iorek agreed. Four times in their new hunt, Iorek paused, but did not explain why and he did not stop long enough to make Lyra ask.

They were fast, much faster than the men had been, but the men had also timed their attack very well, waiting for exactly when Iorek and Lyra had left the camp just far enough for a bear to not notice the battle but soon enough that the two were likely to be gone a good long while. Even so, the men never knew how close they cut it, for they were only just closing the gate when the bear and the girl spied the stronghold.

They did not go close, just near enough to be certain that was where Lee was taken.

“What do we do, Iorek?” Lyra whispered. “Shall we jump that fence and you can crush their skulls and eat their hearts and me and Pan will find Mr. Scoresby and Hester and protect them.” She did not say what she would protect them with, and Iorek felt a sense of pride that was strange considering she was a human and not his own (except she was his, in ways too difficult for a bear to explain, bears dealt in practicalities not…not whatever this was). Even so, though he admired her determination and instinctive sense of right, he could not admire her battle tactics.

“This is a trap and one meant for the two of us,” Iorek said. “They are expecting such a move. Remember, you cannot trick a bear, but they are trying.”

“Well then, what will we do?” Lyra asked. “We cannot just…just let them keep Mr. Scoresby in there.”

“Of course not,” Iorek agreed. “But we will find a different way in, one unexpected.”

They circled the stronghold, inspecting its strengths and weaknesses. Not too close; they could see a sentry with his falcon daemon sitting at the top of a sort of platform in a corner. But close enough. They were close enough to hear when Lee Scoresby _screamed_.

It was a near thing. Every muscle in Iorek tensed, wound and ready to turn into a burst of savage motion, propelling him forward half a step. For that moment, Iorek was ready to ignore all bear sense, all common sense, and run straight into the trap, trusting in his strength to push him through to his friend.

Lyra felt the muscles move beneath her, felt the deep growl, too deep to be heard with the ears but felt like a rumble of thunder beneath her hand. If Iorek had sprung, she would have ridden without protest.

But Iorek did not spring. He was too true a bear to be tricked, and he controlled his instincts and his emotions.

“They are dead,” he growled, his voice impossibly deep and low, so the words barely registered as words, but Lyra understood anyway. “Every last one of them, they are dead and their stronghold is forfeit.”

“I didn’t think Mr. Scoresby could ever sound like that,” Lyra whispered, trembling with something other than fear but that brought tears to her eyes. Pan bristled into a wolverine, teeth bared. The scream had gone on and on, too, tugging at them, until Lyra had wanted to beg for Iorek to change his mind and charge in. But she knew better, so she listened, and they waited, until it was silent once again.

Then Iorek circled the stronghold again, moving towards the side where the screams had come from.

Inside the stronghold, a man and his wolf left the building where Lee Scoresby was kept. The man Lee had dubbed ‘Captain’ looked around, eying the preparations, then wandered over to the raised platform where the sentry kept watch. He climbed, not high enough to see over the wall or be seen, but high enough to speak without having to shout. His wolf sat at the foot of the platform, unable to climb after, another reason to not go too high. He looked up at the sentry, who did not look back, keeping his eyes looking outward.

“Any sign of the bear or the girl?” asked the Captain.

“Yes sir” answered the sentry, keeping his gaze outward, “Almost missed them, but when the Texan screamed, Miara saw movement between the trees.”

“It’s the bear,” said the hawk, also keeping her eyes outward rather than towards the one she spoke to, “I could not quite see, but I think the girl was with him. I saw an animal with the bear; it must have been her daemon.”

“He brought her with him?” asked the Captain, raising an eyebrow. “No luck in separating them, then. Oh well, it was always a long shot.” Then he gave the sentry a pointed look, a look the sentry missed as his eyes never left off their watch. “And why?” asked the Captain, “Did you not raise the alarm the moment the bear was spotted?”

“Because you ordered me not to, sir,” answered the sentry, unconcerned. “We made out like we had seen nothing.”

“Very well done,” said the Captain, pleased. Then he considered his next move.

Everyone says you cannot trick a bear. But bears can be trapped. And he knew the story of this bear. This bear was prey to his anger. Get him angry enough, and he will lose all reason. This bear had been tricked before, right out of a throne. Right out of his armor.

Finding out that an armored bear was one of the guardians of their current prey had been daunting, let alone the _king_ of the armored bears, but he was not a man to be stopped by a _beast_. 

“Sir?” said the sentry’s voice, just when the Captain had been on the verge of leaving.

“Yes?”

“What did you do to get the Texan to scream?”

There was a pause while the Captain looked up at the sentry, eyebrow raised at the sentry’s curiosity.

“Why do you ask?”

“Miara says Johnson ran out and was sick after. We wanted to know what could affect a soldier like Johnson like _that_.”

The Captain shrugged, then answered truthfully. “I touched the man’s daemon. Dragged her away from him. Let him feel the stretch.”

The sentry did not look shocked, though the falcon betrayed a hint of unease by ruffling her feathers in a sort of shudder.

“That would do it, I suppose,” said the sentry, not sounding near as horrified as most would be in his place. He had seen worse. Then, “Keep an eye on Johnson. Wouldn’t want him to grow squeamish and ruin the plan.”

“I have my eyes on everyone,” answered the Captain, and then he climbed down and left and saw to the rest of the preparations. Everyone said you couldn’t trick a bear. He was ready to do the impossible.


	3. Chapter 3

The next hour for Lee Scoresby and Hester was just about as unpleasant an hour as they had ever lived, including the one when they were penned down under gunfire and Hester had been clipped by a bullet and Lee had one still lodged inside him. Then adrenaline from the battle had carried them through and then they had passed out and missed the worst of the pain.

That hour had been painful and terrifying, but the kind of terrifying one might barely have the time to notice in the moment though it haunts one’s dreams for years after.

The hour they spent now was almost the opposite; there was nothing to keep busy with and no way to fight and so nothing to distract them from how very horrible the present was. Lee felt exhausted to his soul; the ordeal of being made to walk with his arms bound, and the deep bruises and lacerations from the fight (and from the walk, from falling _hard_ ), and then to have his daemon _touched_ , and pulled away…he was exhausted to his soul. And he was still a captive and still surrounded by tormentors who seemed disinclined to let him lay still and recover.

If he thought his ribs might be cracked before, he was fairly certain they were most definitely broken now.

“What’s that sound?” said a voice in the dark, gleeful and hateful all at once. The ‘sound’ might have been Hester inadvertently shifting just a millimeter. She huddled, trembling, and trying not to. Because one of their guards had taken the Captain at his word and then some when told to beat them if Hester made a noise, and considering his violent interpretation neither were completely sure he had taken the second instruction, that he not kill them, to heart.

Lee strained his ears, not to hear Hester; he knew she was as silent as only a hare could be and was certain his tormentor was pretending to hear things as her. No, Lee was listening for anything really; he could not see and what he could smell was neither pleasant nor useful, and all he could taste was the foulness of the rag in his mouth mixed with his own blood and what he could feel was the metal encasing his wrists, holding them behind his back, and around his ankles. And cold. And pain. There was quite a lot of the latter, and just enough of the former to be unpleasant without numbing the pain.

Mostly he was listening because being hit was unpleasant but not knowing it was coming was worse.

“Did you hear the rabbit make a noise?” the voice of the less pleasant guard said, coming from yet another direction and Lee tensed. He knew what was coming, but not from where or to what part of his body.

“I didn’t hear anything,” answered the other guard, his voice young and trying to sound unconcerned but betraying his unease. Normally, Lee would pity him and try to search out how he might help the boy who got in over his head. Under the current circumstances, he was a bit preoccupied with worrying over people who _hadn’t_ taken up with violent abductors. Himself, mostly, and Hester, seeing as they were the ones currently abducted. But also Iorek and Lyra and Pan.

Lee had plenty of time to fret and worry and try to make some kind of plan that would protect his friends and there was nothing. He could see no way to free himself, not without help. And wasn’t that humiliating. Even worse, though, he was the bait. He could be the very reason those he loved were hurt.

“I think I did hear the rabbit,” said the older guard, voice very close now, which was all the warning Lee got before the fist to his stomach.

Lee gagged, doing his best to not be sick, because if he were sick with the gag in there was a good chance he’d drown in it. For a long moment, there was nothing else to think about; don’t be sick and remember how to _breathe_. For long seconds, his diaphragm spasmed and he couldn’t get a breath and he was gagging on nothing and all his body hurt by that point but it _radiated_ from that point in his stomach where the fist had met.

Looking on the plus side, at least it wasn’t his ribs again; Lee thought a few more hits _there_ and he’d end choking on blood and his tormentor would swiftly have become his murderer. Perhaps the guard knew that too, because for a while he amused himself by aiming for just about everywhere except his upper torso.

If there was one win to be had here, it was that Lee managed to hold his silence almost as well as Hester. True, he did it by clenching on the gag as hard as he could, but he did not scream again.

“Get up, on your knees,” ordered the guard, an unknown amount of torments later. They insisted on this. Lee would prefer to just let himself lie on the ground, curled up as well as he could to protect his more vulnerable places, but the guard liked him on his knees. When Lee tried to pretend to be knocked unconscious or just ignore the order, the guard would go over and shake Hester’s cage until the poor hare felt almost as rough as Lee. Hester still didn’t make a noise, not even then; the only reason Lee even knew what was happening was because he could feel it as sure as she felt every hit on him, and he would scrambled to his knees. His knees felt raw by that point; the ground was not soft and they had already taken a skinning during the worst of his tumbles during the walk there, but compared to everything else they weren’t so bad off. It was the being made to kneel that he hated; even if they’d offered him a pillow to kneel on he’d have hated it.

Every time was a struggle; a struggle in balance, a struggle against his wounds, against pain. A struggle to do as he was told. This time was worse, because he did not actually know when he had stopped kneeling, and if that was happening then passing out likely wasn’t far off. And if he passed out then he definitely would not be able to do anything to stop the things to come or help his friends.

He completed that struggle, before they could do anything to Hester, and stayed as tall and still as he could hold himself, which was not very; he was trembling too hard and his muscles too exhausted. He felt cold, colder than he thought he should, but he had lost all sense of time and maybe it was night; nights in Lapland were cold, even in the summer, and he didn’t have his coat.

He waited for another hit to come in the dark. He waited for a chance to fight back. He waited.

The next hit didn’t come. Instead, there was the sound of a door.

“Made a lot of noise, did the rabbit?” asked a voice as the person doing the opening stepped into the room. It was the Captain’s voice.

“Wouldn’t shut up,” answered the older guard, then, “en’t that right?”

For a moment, Lee wondered if he was being asked, which was stupid as he still had the gag. But it was the other guard, the young one, who did answer, his voice hesitating a moment.

“Yes sir, that’s right,” he said.

“And you didn’t kill them, then? Good job, the both of you. Now, it’s time. Get them ready.” And he turned and left.

Lee did not know what that meant, but it did not bode well.

Outside, Iorek and Lyra had similar misgivings as they noted an increase in activity.

“Just when are we going to go get Mr. Scoresby?” Lyra asked, not for the first time.

“As soon as the time is apt,” Iorek answered, just as calmly and patiently as he had answered the first time. Sometimes he would growl, deep in his throat, his keen senses taking in all they could and fitting together the pieces of the trap, like a puzzle. He never growled at Lyra, though, and Lyra could appreciate the sentiment. If girls could growl half so well, she would have been growling herself.

“Mr. Scoresby has been very quiet this last hour,” Lyra remarked next, her voice mostly managing to hold back the tremble. “He hasn’t screamed again…has he.”

“Lee’s not dead in there,” Iorek said, answering the real question Lyra had not dared to ask. “And he’s not dying. A dying man smells different from a live one.”

“You can smell that from all the way out here?” Lyra asked, surprised.

“A bear can smell things for miles; I could have tracked them even without their footprints. The only reason I never knew they were here before was because we were moving downwind, so as not to spook the elk, and camp was behind us. The moment the wind shifted, I knew. Just as I know they are building up a trap in there, a trap meant for me.”

“What kind of trap?” Lyra asked, alarmed.

“One that needs casks of oil,” Iorek answered. “And I think Lee will be the bait. They want him alive for that.”

But they did not need him alive; Iorek did not tell her. Iorek knew he would attack them, whether to rescue his friend…or avenge him. He also did not tell her that Lee’s scent was that of a wounded animal. Had Iorek been a primitive bear, one who didn’t count Lee as a friend, he might have sensed him as easy prey. He told her none of that, for although armored bears do not shelter their young, neither do they needlessly burden them. And even aside from that, Iorek did not like to think on his friend as wounded prey, and it was easier not to say it.

“But what is our plan?” Lyra demanded. “And why are we just waiting here while they set up their trap with Mr. Scoresby as bait?”

“Don’t scold him, Lyra,” Pan said, in what was likely meant to be just for her ears, only bears are very keen of hearing. They could not hear as well as they could smell, but their hearing was most certainly better than most human’s.

“Had we rushed in, they would have had me in a net in seconds, and set it alight. Perhaps I could have fought myself free before I burned up or choked on the smoke, but they would not have left me alone to do it. They have weapons and they mean to use them. The trap was already set long before they went for Lee Scoresby. They only move now because I failed to spring it as they had hoped. Now they mean to raise my wrath until I lose all reason and storm in anyway. And once I am dead, they will come for you. And I think they mean to use your love for Lee Scoresby to keep you from running too far away for them to catch you. You won’t run off on your own if you think you are leaving him to his fate, and so you will stay close, and you will be alone, and they have wolf daemons and they will find you. I do not know why they want you, but I am convinced capturing you is what this entire thing is about.”

Lyra and Pan listened to this speech, pale and aghast.

“But Iorek, how do you know all that?” Lyra asked, not questioning that it was true, for she sensed it was, but wondering how he could know.

“You cannot trick a bear; I have told you this. I can smell the rope soaked in oil; fire is an old weapon used against bears, we use it ourselves, the meaning is not hard to deduce. And I could hear the leader talking from time to time. Not well, my ears are not so keen as my nose, but perhaps better than you were able. I cannot hear inside the buildings; I cannot hear Lee Scoresby, but I can hear when words are spoken outside. They know you are here and they know I am here and they want you and are expecting me.”

“Then…then what are we going to do?” Lyra asked. “How are we going to save Mr. Scoresby?”

Iorek said nothing for a moment, feeling the weight of the girl’s expectations and thinking, for perhaps the hundredth time, that there really was something of a bear in her spirit. She did not doubt for a moment that Iorek meant to go after Lee Scoresby, trap or no trap, even though the most sensible action would be to go far away and escape while they still could. Iorek had no doubt that the idea of simply running away had not even crossed Lyra’s mind, not for a single moment, nor did she conceive that the idea might have crossed Iorek’s mind.

She would be wrong. If Iorek were alone, there was not a force in the world that could make him leave Lee Scoresby to his fate, even if it meant knowingly leaping into a trap. But he was not alone. He had Lyra in his charge. And he had promised Lee that he would protect her. Protecting her best would mean taking her someplace far from those who threatened her.

Bears do not break their word, not true bears like Iorek. Neither do bears abandon their companions. Iorek felt torn in a way he rarely knew; bears know what is _right_ and they do it, without hesitation, but now two paths were right and he was somewhere in between.

So he did not run and he did not attack, and all the while he could smell Lee and Hester, close, _wounded_. But he also did not simply wait. Bears do not hesitate. Bears stalk. They may appear to creep and lay low and do nothing, but all the while they are getting a feel for the terrain, for their prey, and they are preparing for the final lunge.

“I think,” he said after that long moment, “We will do what they do not expect. How much do you trust me?”

“With all my being and beyond,” Lyra answered without hesitation.

“I thought as much,” Iorek said approvingly. “Lee is not going to like this plan. He looks on you like you are his daughter and he wants you safe above all things, but this plan will work and you _will_ be safe, safer than you ever could be if we did it another way.”

“He does?” Lyra asked, sounding shocked, and perhaps not having heard anything Iorek had said past ‘ _he looks on you like you are his daughter’_.

“Of course he does,” Pan said, shocking Lyra further. “He looks after us, don’t he? And he comes for us, always, when we get separated. But now we’re going to come for him. En’t we?”

“Sure we are,” Lyra declared boldly, a determined gleam in her eye. Iorek wondered if she knew just how much she had sounded like Lee in that moment.

“Lyra Silvertongue,” said Iorek, “You will need to be brave and wise a little longer and then we will be together again.”

“And they will all be dead,” Lyra added. A different adult might have been alarmed by her blood thirstiness. The bear approved.

“And they will all be dead,” he agreed.

Which was more or less the moment Lee and Hester were dragged away from their prison to the middle of the open space. It was all stone there, except at the center, where a metal pole with shackles was waiting. That was where Lee was made to go. Hester, still in the cage, still kept an uncomfortable distance, was laid nearby. The Captain put his foot on the top, effectively making sure the hare had no chance to escape while everyone was distracted. Not that the hare could have gotten far anyway, not with Lee shackled to the pole.

Preparing Lee had involved removing the gag at last, but not the blindfold. They wanted him to have the use of his voice for what was to come, but he did not need to see. They also removed his shirt, leaving his upper torso bare. His rough treatment was clearly evident across his chest; blotches of red, purple, yellow, almost black in places, bleeding in others, scratches and bruises with hardly any unblemished skin to see. His back was somewhat less marred; there were bruises but not as bad as his front.

That was going to be remedied very soon.

Lyra and Iorek could not see this, of course, because the fence, flimsy contraption though it was, still did its job of screening what was on the other side. They could hear the commotion though, and Iorek knew by scent alone the moment his friend was dragged out.

“What is happening?” whispered Lyra.

“They mean to incite my wrath now,” growled Iorek. “And they are going to succeed.”

“What?” Lyra said. “Why, what are they going to do?”

Iorek did not answer. He did not need to. Lyra did not have a bear’s ears, but the sounds were nearby and out of doors and they carried quite well enough. 

“How many?” said a voice, not Lee’s.

“Until his friends come for him,” answered another. Then, after a small pause, “Or until he’s dead.”

There was a longer moment of silence. Then a sound, familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, of something striking against flesh, accompanied by a noise that was as much surprise as it was pain, not a scream, but close to one, and loud enough to be heard all they way where Lyra and Pan and Iorek were listening. _That_ was Lee Scoresby’s voice.

The smacking sound came again, this time without the cry, but it was too late; they had already heard and they already knew. And striking sound came a third time.

“They’re hurting him” Lyra whispered, barely able to say the words she was so full of passion and anger and fear and horror all at once. “They’re…they’re beating him, en’t they.”

Iorek’s response was a growl. When he did speak, the rumble was so low Lyra had trouble understanding him and Pan had to repeat his words back for her. He did have a plan. Perhaps it was even a good plan.

“I…I understand,” Lyra choked out. “I can be strong enough…for…for Mr. Scoresby. I will tell such lies they won’t know but the sky has turned red.”

“Then go,” said Iorek, “Before I lose my reason and my life.”

Lyra went, alone, except for Pan, feeling very small. All the while, they could hear the meaty thuds of something hitting against someone, as though they never meant to stop.

But they would stop.

Lyra went right up to the gate to the stronghold and she knocked on the door.

“Hey!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. “Hey, I want to talk to you!”

The striking sound stopped. And the gate opened. Then it closed again, with the girl and her daemon on the other side.


	4. Chapter 4

Lee Scoresby had been beaten on two distinct occasions during all the years of his life. Not beaten as in losing a card game, or even coming off worse in a fight, because that happened too numerous to count, and at that point whether or not someone is ‘beaten’ often comes down to mindset. There are some who find wins even in their losses just as there are some who see a loss even when they win. Lee Scoresby had a winning mindset. Being beaten is something else entirely. It’s having all the fight taken away and just taking the pain.

The first time that happened to Lee Scoresby, he was thirteen, Hester had only just settled as an arctic hare (they did not even know she was an _arctic_ hare yet, just that she was big for a jackrabbit), at the age where boys are learning to be men. It’s a rough time for most boys and Lee was no different.

He was a lot like Lyra in some ways, good at making friends but not adverse to a good fight. Had Lyra and Lee somehow managed to meet as children, they would have recognized a kindred soul. And though Texas was a far cry from Oxford, it had its own childhood wars. It also had its own alliances, the biggest in Lee’s neck of the woods being loneliness because it was a far cry from the city where companions of one’s age could be met in every quarter. It was not that the country lacked children so much as that the country was a pretty big place, and there were times when a boy could wander for hours and find no one for so much as a simple two person card game, let alone getting up enough for a ball game or king of the mountain. Even having five or six siblings was no guarantee of finding a ready companion, not if two were working the field and one was sent on an errand and the other had made herself scarce to avoid the errand and the last was out fishing.

Peter Delacroix could not be said to be Lee’s friend. Their social circles were too different for such a claim. Peter was a boy of the town, if that word could be applied to a row of buildings that took up less space than a cow took to pasture. There were all the necessary government buildings, several doubling up, then those businesses necessary for the running of farms, and precious little else. If one encircled the space to include the school and the church and the old fort, which were not on that strip but off on their own, the town was a more decent size, but then mostly made up of empty space, and mostly those places were still considered _country_. Lee was from the country, through and through, and a small acre at that. 

Then there was the fact that Lee was of Danish ancestry (with maybe some Navajo in there, sometime back, when it was still thought shameful and hidden so no one could know for sure). Peter had Danish in him too, but his name made it all too obvious his French roots. Whenever the boys got up a game of Alamo, Peter was unanimously voted to be on the French side, no matter which side Peter wanted to play (and being told he _had_ to be French was enough to make anyone want to be the other side). Lee always played the Dane, with no argument from anyone, and was known to shout, “It’s Pierre the Frenchman, run!” when he saw Peter coming. On the other hand, Lee also was known to say ‘He can be an honorary Dane if he wants to’. This, from a proud town boy’s perspective, was not accepted as an overture of friendship so much as a condensation and only made him less friendly towards Lee.

Generally, their boyhood squabbles ended in black eyes and bloody grins and ‘you shoulda seen the other guy’. But now Lee was thirteen, and Peter was fourteen, and daemons had settled and lines had shifted.

“What were you doing with our Lacy?” Peter demanded one day, backed by two of his friends and his younger brother. Lacy being his sister, who Lee had spent most of his life scornful of for exactly the same reasons he scorned Peter.

What Lee had done with Lacy was to see her crying behind the schoolhouse one day. The schoolhouse was already neutral territory in their skiffs, and Lee generally never liked seeing a person cry. Lee was inclined to give the girl privacy, but Hester had already crept up to talk to Ulysses, not quite settled yet but mostly these days taking the form of a bird.

It was the first time Lee had ever noticed that Lacy was _pretty_ and that made him want to sit close to her and wipe away her tears and make her smile. It would be some long years before he would come to terms with liking women but not wanting anything more from them than maybe a chaste kiss or to run his fingers against soft skin, soft hair, basking in their loveliness. Anyway, nothing more than handholding and maybe a chaste kiss was expected from those his age.

“What do you want, Lee Scoresby,” Lacy had demanded, wiping her own eyes, and sounding utterly miserable.

“Did someone hurt you?” demanded Lee, “Because I’ll hurt them back, if they did.”

“Damn straight,” affirmed Hester, which made Lacy giggle and Ulysses flitted down to take the form of a cat and rub against the daemon.

“No one did nothing,” Lacy said, and then, “Don’t you ever look ahead and just wish everything different?”

Lee had absolutely no idea what Lacy was talking about. If he ‘looked ahead’ at all, it was to imagine being a man, and staggering around with a six shooter, ready to fight off bandits, and likely working his own bit of land. That seemed a glorious thing to Lee, and nothing to cry over, unless it was that he was not yet grown.

“I suppose I can’t get a boy and his _jackrabbit_ to understand,” Lacy said, voice full of the kind of scorn that would normally have Lee and Hester bristling and ready for a comeback. Only Lacy still looked so sweet, and so tragic, that Lee couldn’t. Ulysses flitted as a bird again, fluttering up as high as he dared before dropping back to Lacy’s shoulder. “We want to go to the city, a real city, with…oh…everything. Lights that stay on all night, and…and theater…and people crowded in thick and everything to do and no one talks about you staying in the same old town and marrying one of the same stupid boys you’ve known all your life and have children and doing nothing and seeing nothing.”

“Well,” said Lee, who had never thought such thoughts in his entire life but who immediately saw the appeal of travel, “Well why not go then? You could…you could hide out with the migrants when they move on ‘til you reach a town with a train station and then ride it ‘til you reach the city and there you will be!”

The very idea of such an adventure stirred his blood, and he did not know in the least why Lacy gave him such a pitying look.

“Is that your big plan, Lee Scoresby? And how am I meant to eat? And what work am I good for when I get there? And anyway, how do I fight off bandits or who knows what on the way?”

“Can’t you shoot a pistol?” Lee asked in turn, swaggering a bit as only a thirteen-year-old boy can who just learned to shoot himself and pitied those who had yet to obtain that skill.

“My pa says that en’t for little girls,” Lacy answered.

The end result was a series of very secret lessons that meant Lee and Lacy were noticed to sneak off together.

Lee would rather die than give Lacy away to her brothers and his friends. On the other hand, there was four of them, and three were older and bigger. Lee expected to come off the worst, but he meant to fight.

The other boys didn’t let him fight, though. Their grievance, they felt, called for vengeance, not settlement. Almost before Lee understood the danger, the bigger of them had Lee’s arms behind his back, and his bull terrier had a hold on Hester, and Lee was held in place, defenseless, for the other three to exact their vengeance.

There’s no knowing how far it would have gone. Lee had never faced such pure vitriol before, and he felt something he never knew he could feel facing other boys: fear for his very life. Fists lit into Lee from three directions at once and he wasn’t allowed to fend them off or fight back or even run away, and he couldn’t even use his voice because one of them had socked him in the stomach and it’s simply not possible to talk when that is happening.

It got broken up before the boys took it further than could ever be taken back, because Lacy Delacroix launched a stone at Jamie Lloyd, and having gained attention shouted vitriol and scorn enough to stop all four boys in their shouts. Ulysses stood at her side, a growling, snarling wolf.

“And if you don’t leave off I’ma gonna get pa’s pistol and I’ll shoot you down, kin or no kin. You just leave Lee Scoresby alone!”

“You never even held a pistol before,” Peter answered, full of vitriol and scorn himself.

“That’s what you think,” she said. “Lee learned me all there is to know and I’m a better shot than you any day. Just you tell them, Lee.”

Had Lee Scoresby been older and more mature, he’d have admired her like nothing else in that moment. Being thirteen, feeling half killed, and humiliated like never in his life before, Lee Scoresby felt less than grateful to be saved by a girl whose daemon hadn’t even settled yet.

“I don’t need no help fighting no French boys,” Lee had answered, instead of ‘Sure she can shoot,’ like, for years later, he wished he had. And, having escaped their hold in the distraction, he grabbed up Hester and ran away, half limping and half blind with blood running down his face.

For a month after, he heard talk of the time Lee Scoresby was beat up (not, he got in a fight, it was always, ‘got beat up’) and was saved by a girl. It did not help matters that, thanks to her intervention, it got back to Lee’s dad that Lee had been ‘borrowing’ his pistol to ‘show off for a girl’. It would take years for Lee Scoresby to understand the situation in terms other than ‘complete humiliation’.

Being beaten is never just painful because of something so trivial and fleeting as pain.

That is not to say the pain, in and of itself, is not _phenomenal_.

Lee Scoresby was not a thirteen-year-old boy anymore.

They cut away his shirt and took him from the storage shack and dragged him to the metal pole and attached new shackles to his wrists that held his arms up above his head, and he was not nearly naïve enough to not guess the direction this was going.

They had taken the gag but not the blindfold. He couldn’t see what implement they intended to use, but he knew there was one; a whip maybe, or a cane. Hester could have told him, but Hester was not saying anything and Lee did not ask.

“How many,” said a voice, one of the men who hadn’t been acting as Lee’s guard.

“Until his friends come for him,” answered the Captain, and then, “Or until he’s dead.”

That was all the warning that Lee got before the first strike against his back.

He knew it was coming, because what else could they be talking about in the current situation, but it still came as a shock and he cried out in spite of himself. He still didn’t know what was hitting him, just that it hit hot and hard and most certainly left its mark. It hurt.

The first had been across his shoulders, the second lower down. This time he did manage to contain his reaction. He might not have Iorek’s keen insight into whatever trap was cooked up, but he understood well enough his own role in it, and he did not wish to give them anything that would aid their cause.

Lee’s lip was bleeding on the third hit, because he bit it to contain his scream.

The strikes were spaced out; likely they wanted him to feel the full brunt of each one instead of letting them all blend together. Or they wanted to prolong it as much as possible; had they come on hard and fast it wouldn’t take much for ‘until he’s dead’ to be the outcome. This way they could work him over for an age before he inevitably succumbed to the beating.

The next three came across the previous strikes, and blood ran down his chin (down his back), but he still did not cry out. He did not want to burden Iorek and Lyra with his pain. He did not want to imagine them out there, knowing Lee Scoresby to be beaten.

By the tenth, Hester was clawing at the bottom of her cage. Normally she would be screaming at this point; curses, maybe even some begging because daemons did not have a human’s sense of pride, not when it came to hurting their human. She didn’t shout now though, just clawed uselessly against metal.

In the part of Lee’s mind not preoccupied by pain, and humiliation, and fear (for himself, for his friends), and anger, the man wondered if Hester meant to ever speak again, after that last hour when every miniscule sound ended in Lee being hurt.

Mostly, Lee wondered how long he could withstand without making a noise himself, how long he could simply keep standing.

A particularly brutal lash across already split skin raised a low moan, but he stubbornly did not allow it to grow, hoped it wouldn’t be heard.

And then there was a pause in the beating. A hammering at the gate and a voice shouting.

When Lyra Silvertongue marched determinedly into the stronghold, shouting, “Just you stop! You got me, and the bear’s run off, and…Mr. Scoresby!” The last was said half in a horrified gasp, half in a sob. No doubt that was the moment she truly saw the state he was in. Never in all his long years had Lee more admired a person than he admired his young would-be savior. And never in all his long years had Lee felt such _horror_.

“I’m fine,” Lee called blindly in her direction. “Looks worse’n it is.”

As if to contradict that or make a point, whoever was hitting him struck again. It was unexpected and Lee was not the least bit braced for it, and it wrung out the second pained shout from his throat, though that was nothing to the horrified shout Lyra gave.

“You…you stop, I said!”

“Hold off a moment,” the Captain’s voice ordered, and then, almost gently, in the sort of condescending tone many men got with little girls, “Alright, sweetheart, tell us then. What has become of the armored bear?”

“He saw you meant to trap him,” Lyra answered, and Lee could hear the tears in her voice, and he clenched his hands, holding the chains to his own shackles. His back throbbed, his body ached and burned and shivered, but he would take that a hundred times and more than to know Lyra in the hands of the ones doing the hurting. What was Iorek _thinking_? Of course, Lyra was not done with her story. 

“Iorek said…he said it was no good and…and no bear was going to go down for a _human_ , and he said he’d take me away…to…to my father only I wouldn’t go. He said you wanted me and I said, better throw in with bandits than a stupid, _honorless_ beast like him. So he said I could do what I like and…and he _left_ me, and there’s nowhere to go, and I could hear you hurting Mr. Scoresby, and…and you can just stop!”

There was a long moment of silence. Lee was sure, in that silence, that it was all going to fall apart. Anyone who knew their camp so well as to know the best time to grab Lee, anyone who was so prepared to fight a bear, must know _something_ of their enemy. If they knew anything about bears, let alone this bear, there is no way they’d accept that the bear just turned tail and ran, and left the humans to their fate.

“I always said those bears were just faithless beasts, playing dress up,” said the Captain. Then he wandered right up next to Lee so he could say, “I guess your lover en’t so in love with you after all, if he cares so little. I thought he might at least care for the girl.”

Lee said nothing, because he did not trust his ability to lie in the moment, and the moment called for lies. The Captain moved away.

“Come along, sweetheart; we’ll get you safe and sound to your father.”

“What about Mr. Scoresby?” asked Lyra. “Just…just let him down and I’ll look after him.”

“Sorry, sweetheart,” said the Captain. “Bears may be faithless but they also are cunning. We won’t do anything long lasting, like, it’s mostly for show, see, it looks rough, like he said, it looks worse than it is. And when we can be sure the bear is good and gone, then we can let him down and have a rest.”

“Yeah,” said the wolf softly at the Captain’s side. “Six feet down.”

If Lyra got the allusion she did not react. She did not go quietly either.

“Please, just, just don’t hurt him no more,” she pleaded, and Lee himself could not say if that was part of the act she was playing or a true plea. Probably a bit of both. Lee wished she would let herself be led away, would cover her ears, would not see or know what was happening. She wouldn’t be Lyra if she did that, though.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” said the captain, then, “Go on.” The last was not said to Lyra, as was rather obvious when the next strike hit against Lee’s back.

“No!” shouted Lyra, but further away. Lee could not see what they were doing to the child; all he knew was that he could not protect her, he could not save her, he could not even protect himself. He could hear her shouting, even as she was taken away into one of the buildings, and Lee did the one thing he could do to protect her, and that was to stay silent for as long as he could manage it.

He couldn’t manage it. Not in the end. Ten hits turned to twenty, turned to thirty. One hit struck against his side, where his bruised ribs were already cracked, and it felt sharp as a knife in that moment and he cried out before he could clamp the noise down, and after that he never entirely got the silence back. He lost count after that as well. At some point, he had lost his footing and just hung, too exhausted to get it back no matter how the shackles bit into his wrists; what was one more pain? And it still didn’t stop

At some point he passed out. He did not know if the beating ended then, because he was not aware to know.

Unconsciousness was not a release; one had only to look at his pained expression to know the torture had followed him into the darkness, and he could still hear Lyra screaming his name, long after she had gone silent.

If there was one good glimmer of hope in all of this it was that the beating was allowed to continue uninterrupted. Iorek had not fallen into their trap after all. Iorek was still free.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I probably should have held off on posting this; I swear I am not usually this prompt in updates, just when a new fandom consumes me and I find few stories of the kind I really want to read and decide I better just write my own.

Iorek Byrinson had the patience of a bear. That is to say, more than enough to settle in for the long hunt, and not remotely enough suffer fools.

Being exiled, _being the fool_ , had been a blow he had scarce recovered from, but if it had taught him nothing else, it had taught him how to think like a human. Not in the sense Iofur had undergone; Iorek was a bear and would always be a bear and had no desire to be anything other than a bear. He understood humans as he understood walruses; they were potentially dangerous, potentially prey, and it was better to understand than to fall for the unknown.

Iorek did not spring their trap that was meant to end in his death. It was a near thing, though, nearer than anyone would ever know. You cannot fool a bear. And when he heard Lee Scoresby’s voice trying to assure the child that he was fine, Iorek was not fooled. And when he heard Lee Scoresby making every effort to suppress his reactions to pain, Iorek was not fooled.

And when Lee Scoresby stopped reacting or making noise, Iorek knew this was no feint, that his friend had been beaten until he had passed out (but not dead, Iorek would have known that too, he was not dead. Yet.). They continued beating him anyway for another minute after, and Iorek dug his claws into the earth and growled.

Everything in Iorek screamed to attack, to remove those who dared harm someone who was _his_. If Lee Scoresby had once given a real, unrestrained scream. If he had once shouted ‘help me, please!’. If they had continued for one second longer to beat him. Iorek cannot say he would not have answered.

But Lee Scoresby remained strong, and Iorek remained strong, and the trap remained unsprung.

Iorek reminded himself that this was not Lee’s first beating (not his first rodeo, as Lee might say). Lee would survive. Iorek had not seen it firsthand, but Lee had lived to tell the tale, and he would this time as well.

The second beating Lee ever received happened when he was nineteen over the matter of a stollen watch.

Lee Scoresby was not a thief; part of the reason his friendship with Iorek had developed so quickly and so completely was because the bear had seen honor in the man. Thieves have no such honor; they take what they had not earned and even the best of rogues, the ones with morals, the rob-from-the-rich-give-to-the-poor sort, were still at the heart of it taking what was not earned. Besides, among bears, stealing was equated with scavenging; intelligent, armored bears are above that. If a bear has not the strength to make its own kill, it is not deserving to eat.

Lee Scoresby was not a thief, but the missing watch was undeniably found among his possessions and Lee, as confounded as any of them, could in no way account for its appearance there.

The ranch was miles from any official authority, but it had its own informal court. His guilt was assumed proven on the spot the moment the watch was discovered, and he was pronounced guilty and, directly this was done, his sentence was carried out: twenty lashes from a bull whip. The fact that he was also not summarily dismissed as a ranch hand on top of this was testament to how well Lee Scoresby was liked by the very ones now carrying out his sentence.

“He’s young and troubled, I reckon, just lost his ma, and temptation comes to all, but we’ll keep him on the straight and narrow,” was the general consensus. The sentence was harsh, of course, because the crime was severe and sometimes life lessons needed a bit of harshness to truly stick.

They had removed his shirt for him and lashed his wrists expertly to a post; being skilled ranch hands there was no threat of cut off circulation but also no chance of escape. Hester was held securely too by two of their daemons, at Lee’s side because they weren’t so cruel as to separate them just when they would need each other’s comfort the most. There were no gags or blindfolds, but also no listening.

In many ways, it was being unheard that was the worst of it.

“I didn’t take it, I don’t know how it got in my things,” was disbelieved. “You don’t have to bind me, I en’t running,” was equally ignored. 

He was never given a chance to remove his own shirt, as they seemed under the impression that he was going to fight their sentence to his last breath. He wasn’t. He knew he was not guilty, but he also saw why they thought he was, and given the chance he’d have said ‘ _I didn’t do it, but I can see why you think I did, and if you can’t believe me then I’ll take what punishment you think owed_ ’ and he’d have removed his own shirt and held the post with unbound hands and let them whip him bloody. At least, he likes to think he’d have been strong enough to not try and run or fight when the pain began.

They took away that choice, stripped away the last of his dignity, and then laid the whip against his back fast and hard.

Hester cursed them with more cuss words than even Lee knew, and he could not imagine where she had picked them up considering they were always together in all things. Lee screamed, because it hurt, and cried, he told himself because he was angry and humiliated, but it was also because it _hurt_.

Then the woman who was the closest thing the ranch had to a doctor took a look at him (part doctor, part shaman, out in the middle of nowhere with the actual closest doctor being several miles off, people were willing to ignore the scriptures in favor of what _worked_ ). She made him spend the night under her care, and said he’d need at _least_ another week off work to recover.

Lee Scoresby went back to work the next day, his back in agony, bandages soaked through with blood within an hour, stonily ignoring how everyone said ‘it’s alright, you’re forgiven, take the time you need’, ignoring Hester who kept at him to ‘rest Lee, you don’t got nothing to prove to them’. Except he did. Because they still thought him a _thief_.

And worse than that, _someone_ had put that watch among his things. One of those people Lee Scoresby had thought his friend had set him up and his _other_ friends thought Lee capable of being guilty.

A week later he collapsed again. “Infection,” was pronounced the cause. It was horrible and an agony, even more so than the original beating, but in some ways it was his saving. Because when the real thief, out of the loop on Lee’s current condition and doubtless annoyed that his first attempt hadn’t gotten Lee Scoresby laid off or worse, again hid a prized knife among Lee Scoresby’s things to be found, Lee Scoresby was declared utterly unable to have committed the deed, being half delirious and under the eye of their doctor.

After that, Lee was given bonus pay by way of compensation and three of Lee’s fellow ranch hands came and told Lee they never _really_ believed he could be the thief and they were sorry for what happened to him and it all was such a shame. Lee smiled and felt vindicated while Hester muttered how they couldn’t have come forward _before_ , back when he stood accused with no evidence to back him up beyond his own word.

Lee got better, with only a small scar to remember the experience by (the whip was brutal but the doctor knew her business, and if it hadn’t been for infection setting in he might not even have had that). Of course, not all scars are visible, and the real thief never tried again but neither were they ever found out. Lee never completely forgot his friends’ quick turning against him or that one of them must be a thief who purposefully tried to get Lee in trouble, and he never felt truly at home among them again; it was part of the reason it was so easy to set off in the midst of the gold rush to seek his fortune, an act that would eventually lead to his ownership of his own balloon.

There was one quirk that came of the adventure. Lee Scoresby himself could not say why it took him the way it did, but after being so accused of something so dishonorable, he set out to cultivate the very skill he had been accused of.

He was not a thief, not _really_. If he managed to slip someone’s possessions off them, he then put them _back_.

“What are you doing, Lee,” Hester asked, her voice full of trepidation, the first time she heard of his new ambition.

“He’s learning a new skill, is what he’s doing,” said Lee’s partner in the endeavor (because Lee never wanted to be caught trying to take something that wasn’t his without an alibi again. He had _permission_ to try and lift Jamie’s belongings without Jamie being the wiser). The quick way in which Jamie approved of the new skill made Lee distrust him, but it was useful all the same.

Years later, when _Iorek_ caught Lee at it (you cannot trick a bear), Iorek was not baffled in the slightest after he heard Lee’s story.

“You wish to understand thieves, so you cannot be their victim,” Iorek said, without any of the condemnation Lee had both expected and feared. It was the first time Lee began to really trust Iorek. Not just to have Lee’s back in a fight, but to be a _friend_.

Iorek hated and despised thieves almost on the same level as murderers (and by murderers he of course meant _bear_ murderers, because what did he care what humans got up to amongst themselves?).

Liars, on the other hand, Iorek looked on with either amusement (those who failed at it) and admiration (those who excelled at it). Of course, _why_ someone lied mattered, but anyone who could convince a bear that the untrue was true deserved respect. Armored bears were intelligent, and lying took wit, and it was seen as a weapon, not as a failing.

Iorek admired Lyra greatly. It was how he knew she could be trusted to do what needed to be done to get all three of them free from the trap.

Lyra was not nearly as sanguine about her place in the plan. She knew she could lie; it was her greatest skill and her sharpest weapon. But her lies hadn’t _worked_ , not completely, no matter what she said they kept hurting Lee Scoresby. And she didn’t want to see him hurt, but them not _letting_ her see, taking her away like a child to be protected from what Mr. Scoresby had to endure, was wrong.

She shouted and struggled and said anything that came to mind and they wouldn’t listen. She promised riches, she told them how her father was great friends with the aeronaut, why else would he have entrusted his daughter to him (they had never met, it was her mother who decided this was for the best after…after she finally admitted maybe she was not good for Lyra and her father would be better…after she finally told Lyra the truth about who her father was). Lyra told such lies, all entirely likely and plausible, painted a picture where it was in their best interest to spare Lee Scoresby and treat him right. And they hadn’t listened.

And Lyra hugged Pan and she broke down and sobbed, and she told herself this was part of her scared little girl act, and that it wasn’t because she was a scared little girl. Lyra was a master liar.

A young man stayed in the small room with her (it wasn’t the shed where they had kept Lee, it was a sort of minimalist barracks with bed frames without mattresses and a pile of blankets and a little stove over which hung a string of drying socks), sat with her while outside they beat Lee Scoresby.

He was young (though to Lyra and Pan he was just as old as any of them, an _adult_ ) and his voice had a quaver to it when he spoke but it didn’t match his eyes, which widened with some emotion every time the reed hit Lee Scoresby’s back (she had seen clearly the implement even if Lee had not; along with the newly forming bruises, the scored lines where blood was drawn, rapidly turning to full on welts). Someone inclined to sympathy towards the handsome young guard might have supposed it was something like remorse, some negative guilty emotion because he knew what was happening was wrong.

Lyra was not inclined to sympathize with _any_ of the people who abducted her Mr. Scoresby and hurt him, who wouldn’t listen. And as an accomplished liar, she could see that same skill in someone else. The young guard was not remorseful at all. He was _enjoying_ those sounds, and pretending he didn’t.

“You poor child,” he said, and he hugged her, and if she weren’t playing the role of a stupid, scared little girl she would have bitten him and scratched and done every dirty fighting trick she knew to pull away. Her skin _crawled_ in his embrace. But she had to be brave and canny ( _for Mr. Scoresby_ ) and she sobbed into his shoulder and did not pull herself free.

“It will be okay,” said the man, his own voice trembling, as if he was unhappy and did not know how to soothe her or make things right.

“But they’re hurting him, and, and, my father will be so _angry_ when he knows. I really don’t know what he will do. If he thought you just…just escorted us through the wild he’d pay most anything but if he knew you were hurting us…hurting his good friend Mr. Scoresby…”

“There, there,” said the man. “I never knew they would be so…so violent. They are horrible, aren’t they?”

Pan, who was keeping vigilant while Lyra played her role as hysterical child, would tell her later that the man had a weird gleam in his eyes when he said this, a horrible gleam that made Pan want to scratch those eyes right out. The man’s wolf lay quiet, staring at Pan, not talking, not consoling, not seeming to be bothered about anything.

“So horrible,” Lyra sobbed out. “Oh my father _will_ be angry. If only…if only someone _saved_ us, we could tell my father _that_ and oh, how he would _reward_ that savior even as he _destroys_ the rest of you.”

“The things they are capable of,” said the young guard, that same uncertain quiver in his voice (those same eyes, alight with excitement and interest). “Johnson …I thought him a good man…a strong man…he’s seen two wars, more atrocities than most could bear and when he saw…he ran right out the door and was sick.”

“What do you mean?” Lyra demanded.

“I think that’s why he was so nasty after, to remind us how he can handle anything.”

Lyra did not know what he was talking about. She wanted to ask. And she did not want to ask. And she wanted the man to stop comforting her. It was around that point that Lee Scoresby started to fail at keeping quiet.

“Please,” Lyra said then, “Please, just…just make them stop! You will be rewarded with more than you can dream, just…just make them stop!”

She used her pleas as an excuse to pull out of the man’s ‘comforting’ embrace, and she did not need Pan to tell her later about his strange reactions because she saw for himself, his face turned slightly away, towards the door, towards where Lee Scoresby was hanging from his shackles, and there came a muffled shout, a man doing his best to contain the noise and failing. And in that moment, the light in the man’s eyes was so horrible to see that Lyra almost wished she still had her face buried in the man’s shoulder just to have avoided it.

What she wanted to do was shout ‘You! You’re as bad as any of them! You’re worse!’, but that was not the role she had come to play and she had to be cannier than them and braver than them. She could not stop herself from drawing back, though. As a sort of excuse, she ran past him and pounded at the door and screamed for Mr. Scoresby.

The stifled cries grew louder, but also rougher, hoarser. Lyra could not say how long this went on for; it felt like hours, like days, but it surely could not have been; the sun was still up for one, though shadows had grown long. And Lyra could not imagine Iorek allowing days and days of this torture.

The worst was when the sounds stopped.

“He’s been beaten utterly senseless,” said the young man, and he didn’t even seem to be trying to hide his interest now. Likely he felt safe because Lyra was turned away from him, but Pan never did. Pan watched him watch Lyra, before the man said, “Perhaps he’s died.” And then he looked at Lyra, as though very keen on seeing how she took that.

She took it almost the same as though she weren’t in the middle of the biggest lie of her life.

“No, please, let me see him,” she sobbed, pounding at the door, struggling when the young man tried to ‘comfort’ her again, beating against him, half daring him to reveal his own lie and fight back. He didn’t though, just shushed her like a mother trying to calm her infant, cooing and making soothing noises and trying to rub her back, all the while she sobbed and beat at him uselessly with her weak child fists.

“I can’t do that,” soothed the man, “And anyway, they aren’t done beating him yet. Can’t you hear the cane striking him?”

Lyra hadn’t, and was so utterly aghast at that unexpected information that she froze, before starting all over again.

When the door finally opened and the leader came in, Lyra had almost exhausted herself with the entire ordeal.

“She’s quite hysterical, poor girl,” said the young guard.

“It’s all over now, sweetheart,” the leader said, his voice saccharine and condescending. “Don’t you worry, your friend’s done his part. The bear never did come; I guess he really doesn’t care. I never thought much of bears but I did think…well, it doesn’t matter. Easier for us. We’ll move out soon.”

“Did…did you kill him?” Lyra asked, her own voice almost as hoarse as Lee’s from all the crying she had done. Her heart fluttered hard in her chest and she watched the leader carefully, ready to catch him in a lie, or the truth.

“He’s fine,” answered the leader (a lie, an obvious lie). “We didn’t kill him.” (Maybe the truth. Or maybe Lyra was just desperate for that to be the truth.)

“My father will be so angry, when he knows what you done to his good friend,” Lyra said tearfully, and then, “Please, Mister, Sir, please let me see him. Let me…let me take care of him and you won’t have to.”

“We’re going to leave him out there a while yet,” said the leader, actually daring to look apologetic. “But don’t worry sweetheart; if the bear doesn’t come by the time we’re ready to go then the bear en’t coming, and we’ll let you nurse him on our way. Here now, we’re going to have our evening meal, join us, and on the morrow our ride will be ready.”

It was early evening. The plan was to leave early the next morning, at first light.

After ‘consoling’ his captive, and seeing food brought to her and relieving her current guard for a new one (to Lyra’s intense relief, she did not know how much longer she could have stood him), the leader wandered around the stronghold, barely glancing in Lee Scoresby’s direction. Lee was no longer hanging by his wrists; they had slackened the chain so he could be laid across the ground. There was no guarantee the man would survive the night like that, but there was no need to make his death certain by leaving him to asphyxiate or lose the use of his hands. His daemon’s cage was left at the same distant, the daemon inside utterly still, perhaps also passed out, perhaps just traumatized to the core, or perhaps biding her time in silence. They still hadn’t bothered to lock her cage. That’s how little concerned they were over her. Lee was going nowhere, so his daemon was going nowhere.

The leader wandered over to the sentry and, as before, climbed partway up so they could talk quietly.

“Any sign?”

“None, not even when the shouting started,” was the answer.

“Do you suppose the child was telling the truth?”

“Why would a little girl lie for a beast?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Little girls can be strange about animals. I had a niece who was crazy for mice; used to sneak about the kitchen disabling the traps, put crumbs out for them.”

“How did you cure her?”

The leader did not answer for a moment, looking up at the sentry with a slightly confused expression on his face. “Cure her? Why should we cure her? She was a stupid little girl but harmless. She got over it in time all on her own.”

There was a longer pause, when the sentry and hawk did not comment, before the leader added, “It helped that a mouse chewed up her favorite doll’s bonnet to line its nest.”

They stood in companionable silence for a while longer, when the sentry spoke again.

“Do you think the Texan will survive the night?”

“Should do. Unless Johnson roughed him up worse than I allowed.”

“I did say to keep an eye on him.”

“You did. Well. I suppose it doesn’t really matter.”

“What if it’s true, what the girl said. That Lee Scoresby is his great friend.”

“…if Lee Scoresby is the great friend of Lord Asriel, escorting his daughter on his command, then why in the world did her father hire _us_ to go and bring her in?”

“Stranger things have happened,” answered the sentry. “He asked her to escort the girl. Texan got lost, brought on that beast…Lord Asriel grows anxious over the matter and sends us in.”

“And does not tell us?”

“He’s a strange man. Who knows what kinds of games he plays.”

“As long as he has deep pockets. Hazard pay, and all that. And we do have his daughter; we can hand her over in our own sweet time when the price is right.”

There is some more silence, then, “The sun is setting. I’ll send Ivanovic and Ava to relieve you.”

“Tell them to stay vigilant,” said the sentry. “If the bear didn’t come yet, it may just be waiting for the cover of darkness.”

“Not much cover from an owl’s gaze.”

Then the leader climbed down, leaving the sentry to wait for the new sentry to take his place.

On the ground, Lee Scoresby lay senseless, his face still contorted by pain, his body shivering. It started to grow cold, and he had no shirt, but he likely would have shivered regardless. Inside the barracks, Lyra cried quietly, and pretended to accept the food she was given and allowed herself to be led to the blankets laid aside for her to sleep on.

“Just let me bring him some food then, a blanket, anything,” she kept saying, and when that was denied, she cried into her blanket and pretended that soothed her into sleep until it accidentally became true sleep.

Outside, a bear continued to not be seen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel free to ignore this note; it's in no way relevant to the story, which I tend to prefer to stand on its own merit anyway. Just felt interested in sharing my journey in exploring Lee Scoresby's character.
> 
> I first read the first two books way long ago, before the third book had come out. And by the time the third book came out, I had lost interest and no longer cared how keenly I had awaited it and never got around to reading it. Then the new HBO series came out (and it had Lin-Manuel Miranda in it) and I watched it. And decided to re-read the books I read so long ago and finally read the third one. And in hindsight I'm kind of glad I waited all these years to finish the series because I suspect reading it then, long before I had even heard of asexuality, that ending might actually have been a bit damaging for me (rather than just disappointing, as it is now, and for completely different reasons than most readers might consider it so). 
> 
> Imagine my confusion that there was no mention of Lee Scoresby being some kind of rogue pick-pocket in the first book whatsoever. Oh well, I think, they never say he isn't, and lovable rogue is a perfectly normal trope that I can appreciate. And then I read the second, and it basically absolutely confirms that Lee Scoresby is not a thief. And the more I think on it, the weirder the change seems. I'm now halfway through 'Once Upon a Time in the North' and the impression I get is an honorable man who wouldn't steal. Unless something big is revealed in the second half, it just seems an odd choice. Oh well. I still don't really care, because Lin-Manuel Miranda, but I felt the need to address it in my story (while ignoring the whole 'really into women' thing going on; it's my story he can be asexual if I say he is and so far nothing contradicts aromantic). And this chapter got away from me a bit. and I guess I felt the need to discuss it via author note. And say I will try to keep up my momentum in writing this (homework I should be doing instead, what homework?) at least until people are out of danger and the comforting part can begin in earnest.


	6. Chapter 6

Lee Scoresby woke into a world of torment. His body ached, the pain so all-encompassing he could not pinpoint the various wounds. Everywhere was a wound. He was cold, too, except for his back which was on fire, and his throat was so dry it felt like it held shards of glass, and every swallow tasted of blood. It was also dark, and the ground was stone, and he shivered violently.

Soft, warm fur cuddled against his heart, shivering with him, and he instinctively moved an arm to hold Hester, only his arm protested the movement ( _everything_ protested the movement) and then he came to be aware of the cold metal encasing his wrists.

It was disorientating to wake up to such a reality; particularly as he hadn’t had the choice of going to sleep. For a long moment he had no memory whatsoever of where he was or why he hurt or why he felt so relieved when he heard Hester’s soft voice whisper, “Lee?”

“Hester?” he said, his voice coming out strange. Between his sore throat and his torn lip the word was rough and slurred.

“I thought they killed us for sure,” whispered Hester. And then, “What are we going to do Lee?”

Lee thought this over. He remembered now, where he was. He was still in the middle of the stronghold, still chained and shirtless, his back an agony, which was rather less of a contrast than he’d have cared for to the rest of his body, which was stiff and sore and also rather bruised up, particularly around the ribs. Someone at some point had taken pity enough to throw a rough blanket over him, which shielded him from the worst of the cold. He kept shivering anyway. Part from the elements and part, he rather feared, from the severity of all that had happened to him.

“We’ve got out of worse,” Lee decided, not so much factually as because he needed that to be true, because if they were in worse situations and got out, then this would come out right as well. Hester was less inclined to that fantasy.

“Really?” she demanded. “When?”

“We en’t shot this time. Just…just roughed up and…” he did not think about a person touching Hester, did not think the word ‘violation’, but they both shuddered anyway. Instead Lee dredged up an old memory, similar in some ways to the current situation (hands, touching Hester, _pain_ ). “And these men, they’re bad, but…but…well, they en’t no _Pierre McConville_.”

“I don’t know…you didn’t see the way that one boy looked at me. At least McConville had a reason to hate us. But these men…it en’t even personal. I think they might be _worse_.”

“Well…whatever happens, we got to get Lyra out of here.”

“I don’t see us being good for much, Lee,” Hester answered, no less determined but more pragmatic. “Even if…” but there she stopped, ear twitching. Lee didn’t seem to notice, just held her as best as he could with shackled wrists and whispered reassurances.

“We have good friends, that’s got to count. So we make things as easy for them as we can.”

Hester did not answer for a bit, perhaps listening to something moving away, perhaps simply not knowing what to say. When she did speak, it was to return to her earlier question.

“So what do we do _now_?” Hester repeated, this time emphasizing the now.

“Play we’re half dead,” Lee decided. “They’ll think we’re down for the count.”

“We _are_ half dead, Lee,” said Hester, tone saying ‘come up with a better plan.’

“All the better for the act,” Lee answered. 

“Listen, Lee,” whispered Hester, “There’s an owl daemon keeping watch, I heard them talking. But I reckon its eyes will be turned outwards, watching for Iorek. If we could get you out of these shackles…get to Lyra and…” There was a moment of silence and then, “Lee?”

No one answered, but Hester did not really expect him to. Lee might be able to pretend to himself but there was no fooling Hester; she could feel his every hurt, his exhaustion, and she felt when he slipped down under again. They were in bad shape, and it seemed very likely that they would need their friends because they weren’t going to get out of this one on their own.

“Don’t leave me, Lee,” Hester whispered. “Because I don’t want to leave you.” Then she found a way to huddle even closer, and closed her eyes, and kept her ears open, and she shivered.

The night passed, for everyone, worse for some than for others, and with the dawn came a noise that roused just about everyone in the stronghold. It was the thrum of an approaching zeppelin, one of moderate size, about twice the size of Lee’s balloon.

The lookout called out its arrival, though that was hardly necessary; the leader was already up and watching its approach. Other came out to join him. Lyra came too, rubbing her eyes and carrying Pan, who appeared to still be half asleep. It was their fifth attempt to escape the barracks; all the other times they found the way barred and an alert guard ready. This time, no one bothered to bar her way and she was allowed to leave unprotested.

Most everyone was looking up; Lyra turned immediately towards Lee Scoresby. She saw him in the same place, or at least someone was; someone had put a blanket over him after all. She hoped he had also gotten some food and drink, but did not think it likely. She wanted to run to him, but thought any such sudden movement would be stopped. They were running out of time. She could not afford to be stopped now.

“Huh,” said a voice next to her, the young man, and Lyra resisted the urge to shrink away. He looked in the direction she did, towards Lee Scoresby, and said, “I guess he didn’t survive the night after all.”

Lyra went cold all over, felt almost faint. “What?” she managed to say.

“His daemon’s disappeared,” the young man pointed out, nodding towards the empty cage.

“And you take that to mean she’s vanished to the great beyond?” said yet another new voice, the one who seemed to be in charge. “That cage en’t even locked; it was never going to hold the rabbit, not once no one was around to keep it in. She’ll be with the man.”

Lyra learned to breathe again. Of course Lee Scoresby had not just up and died in the night. Mr. Scoresby wouldn’t just leave her. Iorek wouldn’t let that happen either. Mr. Scoresby was just sleeping, under that blanket. She just had to go over and wake him up.

“You sure?” asked the young man. “You didn’t see how rough Johnson went on him. Cracked some ribs; a few good hits in his soft bits too. That can kill a man dead over time.”

“Mr. Scoresby?!” Lyra called, and pretending to herself that this was part of her act, part of being a terrified little girl, she ducked under a reaching hand and ran for him.

“Mr. Scoresby, Mr. Scoresby!” Lyra cried, pulling at the blanket, needing to _see_.

“Lyra?” croaked out a voice, and then Mr. Scoresby was blinking his eyes (or eye, one was rather swollen). The blindfold was gone, less out of kindness and more out of Hester being perfectly free to help out. It was gone and chewed to bits.

“Are you bad off? Are you…are you cold?” Lyra asked as he struggled into a sitting up position. The blanket half fell down one shoulder and the shackles, still holding him to the pole though the chains were slack, did not help. The revealed shoulder had developed into a horrific kaleidoscope of colors, and the skin had been split by the beating towards the top, blood dried black. Lyra did not like to look at it and rather thought Lee Scoresby did not want her to look either, and she reached over and helped to re-drape the blanket around him like a cloak.

“Lyra?” he said again, his voice rough and painful, and this time he sounded surprised.

“Don’t worry,” she whispered into his ear.

“Come along,” said the leader, sauntering over. “Our ride is waiting. We’ll have to go up in a basket; there is no good landing spot here and even if the bear does seem to have good and deserted you both, I’m not such a fool as to walk you through the forest. The girl first.”

“No,” Lyra answered, suddenly defiant, and she sat next to Mr. Scoresby. “We’re staying together.”

The leader raised an eyebrow, then looked at Lee Scoresby, as though to ask what he thought of her display. If he expected him to talk sense into her, he was disappointed.

“Stubborn, this one,” he said instead. “I never could changer her mind once it’s set. Best leave us together.”

“You can be together when we’re in the air,” the leader answered. Then, when Lyra made no move to get up, he said “fine,” and then, over his shoulder, “Get her daemon; I’ll get her into the basket.”

His wolf approached and Lyra shrank back, against Lee, and Lee longed to put an arm around her, but of course he was still chained. Pan darted away, under the blanket. The leader sighed, then reached down and grabbed the girl.

“No!” Lyra shrieked, and Lee Scoresby lurched towards her, never mind his own pains, only to be brought short by the chain. “No!” Lyra shouted again, and then, “It hurts! You’re pulling me too far from my daemon!”

“If your daemon would move, that wouldn’t be a problem,” the leader pointed out, and he took a step back, his wolf watching expectantly for the daemon to come running out so she could grab him. Inevitably, Pan did. And so did Hester. And suddenly there were two arctic hares, both squirming like they both wanted Lyra.

The wolf hesitated. It was so obvious to Lee Scoresby which was Hester that he could scarcely believe no one else could tell, but still the wolf hesitated.

“Which one do I grab?” she asked, looking towards her human, who was still holding a squirming Lyra. The child was small for her age, easy enough for a grown man to lift, but neither was she an infant and she knew how to move to make things difficult. Lee Scoresby watched the exchange with trepidation because there were too many unknowns. He knew how far those men were willing to go with _him_ , but not with _Lyra_. Would they drag her away? Would they decide she was struggling too hard and punish her? Would they _hurt_ her? Lee Scoresby longed to intervene, but he couldn’t, not yet, so he had to trust; trust in Lyra to handle herself. Trust in Iorek to come at the right time and not be killed. Trust in Pan and Hester. It was even harder than being beaten, because no one was holding him to it but at the same time there was no choice. Lee Scoresby hated not having a choice.

It seemed the man did not mean to hurt Lyra, because he was putting up with her struggles in a way that didn’t cause her pain, no matter what she did to _him_. He was also distracted enough to not direct his daemon in how to find Lyra’s daemon. This in turn distracted his wolf.

“Just, just, go for the male hare,” the man managed to reason out. Of course, that was easier said than done; to the untrained eye all hares look the same and the two weren’t exactly showing off the pertinent bits that would give them away. The wolf snarled at them, half lunging, and both hares leapt into Lee Scoresby’s lap and huddled, trembling. Lee Scoresby sat absolutely still, staring at the two hares, hardly breathing.

He wasn’t actually touching Lyra’s Pan, he would _never_ , but Pan was close enough to feel his heat, his heartbeat, just a thin blanket between Lee Scoresby’s skin and the daemon. Lee had to force himself to keep his eyes equally on _both_ hares, because his instinct was to stare at Pan.

The wolf growled again, and the hares darted underneath Lee’s blanket. Lee looked at the wolf, then at the man and Lyra, and waited to see what happened next.

“Why don’t I just grab a hare,” asked the young guard, who had come over during the commotion. They had the attention of just about everyone, except those necessarily looking to the zeppelin. “See which of them screams.”

“Because, if you grabbed the wrong one, you could hurt our charge. We’re meant to protect her.”

“ _He_ protects me,” Lyra said. “You never could.”

“You heard her,” said the young man. “He’d never let me grab the wrong one. If I got close, he’d let me grab his just to save her.”

“You…you can’t touch…” Lyra gasped out, shocked into momentary stillness.

“I said leave it!” the leader ordered, but the youth, not seeming to hear, plunged his hand into the folds of the blanket, and before anyone could stop him came back with a hare by the nape of its neck.

Both Lyra and Lee screamed, though for different reasons. The young man held the hare aloft with a triumphant expression. Lyra stayed utterly still and let out a sob of horror. 

“There, you see, female,” the young man said, holding Hester aloft to show that off, a disturbing smirk on his face. “Feels…different…holding someone’s…”

Which was as far as he was able to get before he was robbed of the ability to speak by a bullet exploding through his head. He did not even have time to be surprised before he fell.

The leader, on the other hand, had plenty of time for surprise before a bullet found him. It was not a fatal shot; because the one doing the shooting was hindered by a desperate need to not miss and hit the child the target was holding and because a swollen eye can mess with a man’s depth perception.

The leader shouted when the bullet found him and dropped the girl, his wolf letting out a wounded yelp of her own and leaving off trying to grab Pan. The girl wasted no time stumbling back to Lee Scoresby. Lee Scoresby who was not wearing shackles anymore but was holding a pistol aimed squarely at the leader. Now he had a clean shot, but he also had a traumatized girl barreling into him, and now there were more guns aimed back at them. Lee could shoot, but he risked itchy trigger fingers if he did, and Lyra was exposed. So was he, for that matter.

It was an impasse, but time was on the abductors’ side, because Lee Scoresby could feel his own weakness, and there was only so much longer the gun was going to hold steady in his hands.

“How?!” demanded the leader, clutching his bloody side but regrettably still standing.

Lyra turned her head from Lee Scoresby, still crying but somehow distinctively different from the crying little girl from before. “You never thought to search a little girl when she walked right into your trap?” she demanded, voice imperious and scornful. “I just came back from hunting an elk with a bear. Of course I had a gun.”

“Of course,” said the leader, almost sheepishly, and then, with a smile, “Well, that was a clever trick. But I think your brave guardian is going to faint sooner rather than later. And what is your plan then?”

“Pick up the gun myself and shoot you dead,” Lyra answered right back.

The leader laughed out loud. So did several of his men.

“You think you can shoot, then?” the leader asked.

“Sure she can,” said Lee Scoresby, his voice rough and far weaker than he meant it to be, but as proud as anything. “Taught her myself.”

“We’re leaving,” said the leader, frowning now, “And she’s coming with us and you are going to be dead.”

“Or,” said Lee Scoresby, struggling to stand, numerous guns carefully trained on him, watching his every move. Lyra stood too, helping him rise. Lee never lowered his own gun, still trained on the leader. “Or you let us leave and maybe we let you live.”

“You’re half in the grave already!” the leader answered. “How can you possibly think this will end any other way?”

“They’re right, Lee,” Hester said from between Lee’s feet. The man frowned but did not glance down at her, keeping his aim steady.

“That right, Hester?” he answered.

“It does look hopeless Lee. They got a lot of guns. Although…”

“Although?” asked Lee.

“They got guns but we…we got a Iorek.”

Which was all the warning that was given before the full weight of an armored bear burst through the fence, in precisely the right place to shatter the posts holding up the platform where the lookout (who was currently looking in, towards the action) had been standing.


	7. Chapter 7

Chaos erupted.

Guns fired, wolves snarled, Iorek growled, and, with spectacularly good timing, the barracks burst into flame.

Throughout this, Lee Scoresby pulled Lyra down and half under him and held his gun as steady as he could over Lyra’s shoulder. Lyra felt him over her, solid and safe, and rather wished she had an extra pistol for herself to keep and was secretly glad she did not. Because she had seen the man’s head after Mr. Scoresby shot him. She did not see the leader when Mr. Scoresby shot him a second time, because she was already pulled down and the man’s wolf was in the way. And then the man’s wolf was not in the way because the wolf had blown out like a flame. And Lyra wanted to close her eyes and close her ears and huddle under Mr. Scoresby until everything was over. Only she didn’t want Mr. Scoresby or Iorek to think her afraid, and so she kept her eyes open and crouched tensely and waited.

The retort of gunfire was impossibly loud. When Mr. Scoresby first taught her how to use his pistol, he made sure to stick wax in both their ears. She didn’t have that now, and she felt half deafened. She did not want to imagine how Hester felt with her superior hearing. Along with that was shouting, words, and screams.

“Get the net! Get the…argh!”

“Fire!”

“Shoot it! Shoot it! Shoot ‘em all!”

“Nets afire!”

“Zeppelin, Lee!

“Aaah!”

It was almost surreal how fast everything went off. Iorek burst into the stronghold, there was gunfire and flames and shouting but then…within minutes…silence.

All the survivors paused in that silence, not trusting the peace it held, waiting for another trick. Lyra stayed crouched, looking from her narrowed perspective from under Mr. Scoresby, feeling his arm resting on her shoulder, the one holding up the gun and using her to keep it steady. She could feel the heat of the man behind her, scorching hot, the heat of the gun, feel the tremble in his strained muscles. Then feet appeared in front of them, large, the white fur mostly hidden beneath the plates of protective armor.

“Iorek,” Lyra whispered, not knowing if it was really safe yet, if it was okay to distract him.

“It is done, child,” said the bear’s deep voice. “It is done, Lee Scoresby. They are all dead.”

“Oh,” was all Lee Scoresby said, and then suddenly his weight was heavy on top of her, and she almost let him drop to the ground, but Iorek caught him before he could and together, as gently as possible, they lay him down. Hester nuzzled up against him instantly, trembling violently.

“Mr. Scoresby?” said Lyra, and she wasn’t lying anymore, but suddenly she found she was trembling herself, and crying besides.

“We will help him,” said Iorek. “Come. This is not a good place to stay.”

That was certainly true. Quite aside from the numerous dead bodies about the place, the fire from the barracks roared itself into an inferno, while the remains of a large net caught another building alight, and the only reason they were not in danger was that everything around them was stone. The bear gently picked up the man and with surprising dexterity arranged him over his own back. The blanket was left behind and the state of the man’s bare back was disturbing in the extreme; not an inch of it was unmarred and quite a bit of it was striped raw and bloody, and if it wasn’t that then it was bruised deeply. Iorek reached for Hester next, but the hare shied away and then both daemon and bear froze. The bear withdrew his paw.

“Forgive me,” said Iorek and Lyra waited, sure Hester would respond with something, maybe a ‘no, I’m just jumpy, here, lift me up’. Lyra had seen the bear interact with both daemons a hundred times and never had either shown any care about touching him, nor did his touching Pan ever disturb Lyra. Hester said nothing and did not move forward. If it weren’t for Mr. Scoresby draped across the bear’s back, Lyra thought Hester might actually have bolted.

“Let me, Hester,” said Pan, hopping out of Lyra’s arms and into the form of a chimp.

“I’m fine,” said Hester, speaking at last, and then, sounding a bit embarrassed, “Boost me up, Iorek.

For a long moment, Iorek did nothing of the kind, simply looked at Hester, who sat with ears lowered, shaking minutely. Then the bear slowly, gently, brought his paw forward, with the armored side upwards rather than the open paw.

“Jump on then,” he said, and Hester did, and just as slowly and carefully the hare was raised level with Iorek’s shoulder. She hopped off quickly, almost too quickly, paws sliding against armor without real purchase, and Pan danced about under her ready to catch, but the hare didn’t fall, and soon she was huddled against Lee Scoresby, as close as she could manage without aggravating any open wounds.

Behind them, with a roar, the barracks collapsed in on itself. Above them, the zeppelin bobbed, anchored by a rope. Lyra glanced up, suddenly worried there were more enemies in the sky. There was one. _Was_ , being the key word there; he was hanging half out of the open hanger, rifle still twisted around his shoulders, eyes open and unstaring and dead.

“Come, Lyra Silvertongue,” said Iorek. “I have a place ready.” Pan leapt into Lyra’s arms a hare again, and she hugged him tightly and she walked at Iorek’s side. She felt strange, like in a dream, and almost feared her legs would not hold her up, but she did not dare tell Iorek that, because firstly he might think less of her, and secondly poor Mr. Scoresby was on his back and Lyra would just make things worse if she needed a ride as well.

“Get the pistol,” Iorek said, just as he started leading her back out of the hole in the fence.

Lyra ran back and grabbed it. It had fallen on the ground when Mr. Scoresby collapsed. The blanket was there too, and Lyra’s practical side said she should grab it too, but it was red with Lee Scoresby’s blood and she picked it up and tossed it as hard as she could, in the direction of the still blazing fire. Something clattered loudly on the stones when she did. The shackles, still chained to the pole. And a key, one whose previous owner was lying nearby with his head blown away, not that Lyra knew that. She let those things lie and picked up the gun just the way Lee Scoresby taught her, never aiming it towards her friends or herself, and checked it for ammunition. There were no bullets left inside. Lee Scoresby had shot them all. Lyra closed it then and carried it at ready anyway and pretended like she was their rear guard as she ran and caught up to the others.

It felt truly dreamlike how one moment one could be sleeping in an enemies’ den, and the next every last one of them was dead and they were free. She thought she would feel elation and satisfaction, but mostly she felt like all that lying had twisted things up in her and now she really was just a scared little girl.

And Lee Scoresby was not safe yet, not really, because someone who was safe did not have to be carried from the battle and not stir all the time they walked.

Iorek did not take them far, nor did he return them all the way to their old camp. He took them to a new one, one he had clearly taken the time to prepare as a sort of stronghold, much more secure than the flimsy walls of the human stronghold could ever be, because it was designed for a bear’s sensitivities and so it looked natural and could be seen out of easily but not into, and reaching it involved going up a shallow stream first taking away the chance of their footprints or scents being followed.

Here Iorek crouched down for Hester to jump, and then with gentle care, slid the man down into a waiting mattress of pine needles topped with a large, soft sealskin. That had to come from their original camp, and in fact Lyra quickly noted several items that were theirs around. Iorek had been busy.

“What can I do?” asked Lyra.

“I will take care of Lee Scoresby and see that his wounds are cleaned and bound,” said Iorek.

He clearly had more to say, but Lyra interrupted, saying, “I can help; I helped you, didn’t I, I can apply the bloodmoss and…”

“Lyra.” said Iorek, just her name, not even her surname, but it sounded so solid in his mouth that he managed what many scholars back in Oxford could only dream of, and instantly silenced her. Then he continued. “My focus will be on Lee Scoresby as I do this. Every man in that stronghold is now dead, but we do not know if there are others. There may be other dangers. I need you to keep watch, vigilantly, and if there is a hint of danger, alert me. Pan,”

Here, the daemon perked up. He was still a hare, perhaps in commiseration to Hester or perhaps he just enjoyed it.

“Hester’s ears are phenomenal, this I know, but she is connected to Lee Scoresby and she will not be as alert as she might be.”

“I can be alert as I need to be,” Hester said, still huddled against Lee. Iorek ignored that and continued talking to Pan.

“I do not know how daemons work; if you have the same abilities while in the same form, but I ask you to keep your senses outward for danger, whether as a hare or in whatever form you feel will help the most.”

“I’ll stay a hare,” Pan said. “I don’t know if my ears are as good as Hester’s, but I heard _you_ coming.”

“Then that will be good enough,” said Iorek. “Remember, the both of you, I need your eyes and ears and noses outwards. Those men’s sentries failed them when they allowed themselves to be distracted and turn inward. We will be smarter.”

“We sure will,” Lyra answered, determined, and she and Hester arranged themselves within the hideout into a sort of patrol around its edges.

Only then did Iorek approach Hester and Lee. Lee was starting to stir, just barely, making soft whimpering noises that would have mortified him were he awake.

“I need to strip away the rest of his clothing to assess him before I begin,” Iorek said to Hester. “May I?”

“Help him,” Hester said. “And don’t mind me if I’m jumpy, just…help him.”

Iorek nodded once, and then began. Had Lyra turned to watch him, she might have found it almost peculiar how gentle such a massive beast could be, how delicately he managed to manipulate the man so as to best strip him without causing undue discomfort. Lyra did not turn, though, taking her new duty very seriously.

Iorek was in the middle of bathing Lee as gently as a mother bear would her cub, and Lee was half waking up and making pained noises, when Iorek next addressed Lyra again.

“He is waking. What I am about to do will be painful. He may be disorientated. I have seen bears attack their caretakers in such instances. Perhaps if you spoke, he would hear your voice, and understand all is well.”

For a moment Lyra did not have any idea what to even say. She wondered if perhaps she should try singing, but she had never had people who sang to her, soothing her sleep, and she did not think her own voice would soothe anyone. In the end, she did what she did best; she told stories. She told about Oxford, and the adventures she went on with Roger, and about finding out she had a mother. About finding out she had a father rather than an uncle.

All the while she talked, Iorek cleaned Lee Scoresby and applied bloodmoss in open wounds and a pulpy sort of ointment to the bruises, and wrapped bandages, around the open wounds but also tightly around his ribs after feeling the bones moving unnaturally when he tested them.

Lee Scoresby stirred as he did all this, at first not really coherent but reacting to the pain and discomfort by pulling away and letting out soft moans and whimpers and occasionally even a ‘nnn’ that might almost have been a no, and once a sharper yelp while Iorek was testing his ribs.

As the morning progressed, Lee Scoresby’s coherency increased enough that he started gritting his teeth instead of voicing his pain, and by the time Iorek was applying bloodmoss to his knees (having already applied it to the more serious welts, and now finding every instance where the skin had broken up and down the man’s body, big or small), Lee Scoresby was with it enough to protest outright.

“They’re just scratches, they don’t need tending,” was the first words he had spoken for the better part of two hours. Lyra paused in her story, started to turn her head, but remembered her role as lookout and kept her gaze outward.

“That may be so,” Iorek told Lee, “But your body is weakened enough as it is; already you have a fever. This will help, and it will not hurt.”

“Listen to the bear, Lee,” Hester ordered, not least because he could properly see Lee’s knees like Lee could not (he had not gotten as far as opening his eyes, but went by feel), and his knees were not so much scratched as flayed raw; they had taken the brunt of his falls and being made to kneel on stone had done them no favors.

“Fine,” said Lee, before turning his head slightly towards Lyra. He opened his good eye and looked her up and down, as though making certain of things, before saying, “And what did your ma do when she found you with the gyptians?”

“Oh,” said Lyra, who had lost the thread of her story, which up to then had been a rather humorous tale of defiance and daring, explaining how she had slipped away from her mother’s stuffy socialite soiree to attend a gyptian party, in a sort of reverse Cinderella move. “She laughed.”

“And then got angry,” Pan added, which was more than Lyra was going to say. She was trying to share her funniest, most clever stories so as to console Lee Scoresby, and her mother’s changing moods were not funny at all, at least not the kind of funny a wounded man needed to hear about.

“Perhaps she got scared when she couldn’t find you,” Lee Scoresby suggested, closing his eyes and twisting his face in response to whatever Iorek was doing to his knee. He reached blindly until Hester was under his fingers and then he petted her almost aggressively, other hand digging into the seal pelt. “My ma gave me the scolding of my life after she saw me take a tumble off a cliff. Threatened to take her belt to me if I scared her like that again.”

“I see your tendency to hurt yourself started early in life,” Iorek said, moving momentarily from Lee’s wounds to help raise his head and offering him a cup. “Here, drink this.”

Lee accepted the drink, which turned out to be some kind of tea. He did not appreciate the bitter taste, but his lips and tongue greatly appreciated the wetness of it, and he gulped it down greedily. Iorek gave him some more, then laid him back again, and returned to tending to his knees. Lyra was silent during this exchange, so when she spoke at last, Lee could be forgiven for not understanding her question.

“Did she?”

“What?” asked Lee.

“Did she take her belt to you? Your ma?”

“Threatened every other day,” Hester answered for Lee, “Only followed through the once.”

“And we deserved it,” Lee said, grinning like that was a _happy_ memory, then grimacing because the present was full of pain. Then, “Did your ma…” Lee started to ask, but he stopped, not seeming to know how to finish the question.”

“My mother never beat me with a belt,” Lyra answered.

“She laughs,” said Pan, “And then she turns around and gets angry, and I think she could do _anything_ then. She doesn’t need a belt.”

“She wouldn’t do just…just anything,” Lyra protested. “She never hurt us. I been in trouble before many times in Jordan, and sometimes it would hurt for _hours_. She never did that.”

“No one should do that,” Lee said, grimacing this time for reasons completely unrelated to pain.

“Oh, it en’t so bad as it sounds,” Lyra answered, “the Master would never let anyone hurt me, not _really_. It just shows I got into good mischief; if I never got in trouble I think I would be _ashamed_.”

“If you learn anything from Lee,” said Hester, “It’s that some trouble is best avoided.”

“I’ll bet you never avoided trouble in your life,” said Lyra, her voice admiring.

Lee felt a sort of heaviness in his chest that had nothing to do with the cracked ribs or tight bandages. Tears were already too close for comfort, between the pain, and the way his body felt chilled and aching, and the way his mind kept running back over all that happened and suggesting whole new ways things could have gone wrong. So he did not answer, because would she still have that tone in her voice, that _pride_ , like she thought him something wonderful, if he burst into tears on her?

“That en’t a good thing, you know,” Hester said dryly, not so encumbered. By her tone, she almost sounded completely at ease, as if this were any other day spent around the campfire, exchanging stories. Lee wasn’t fooled by her tone though; she was still trembling minutely beneath his fingers. She was shaken too, but doing what she did best, distracting everyone else from their own troubles.

Perhaps Lyra had an answer to that too, but it was at that moment that their conversation was interrupted again.

There was an explosion.

It was not close, not in the camp, but loud and sudden, and it derailed any conversation that might have followed in favor of survival.

“Is it more bandits?” Lyra cried! “Are they exploding the forest trying to find us?”

“We left a fire behind us,” Hester said. “Perhaps it got into the trees.”

“I think a spark made its way to the barrels of oil meant to be used on me,” Iorek said. “I feared this would happen. We must be ready to move fast, if the forest catches.”

“Oh!” said Lyra, horrified, “And I thought the fire would help. I threw the sock line into the oven after everyone went running out when the zeppelin came. It’s all my fault!”

“You acted just as I would have,” Lee protested. Then, towards Iorek, low and serious, as though that would stop Lyra from hearing, “We should move. Fires come on fast. If we had my balloon…but it’s no good wishing.”

“Well,” said Lyra, “But we have got a zeppelin, don’t we? No, I guess we don’t, because we left it by the fire. I guess it will explode next.”

“I do not like this,” said Iorek, but what he was protesting was unclear.

“We have to move,” Lee insisted again, and he moved to sit up, but instead groaned and dropped back. This was particularly unfortunate because Iorek currently had him on his back (so as to see his knees, and really there was no good way to lay him that wasn’t aggravating _something_ ), which meant his beaten back was what hit the ground. The skin and pine needles were soft, but nothing was soft enough as far as his back was concerned, and he let out a moan in spite of himself.

“The wind is in our favor,” Iorek pointed out.

“The wind may shift,” Lee protested, struggling to try and sit up again and failing, his strength leaving him fast.

“Lay back,” Iorek ordered. “I will keep us safe.”

“We keep each other,” murmured Lee, doing as ordered in spite of himself. “Keep each other.”

Iorek breathed in deeply, assessing his friend, tasting the air. The world smelled of pine needles and tea and medicine and blood and sickness and friends and, in the distance, smoke.


	8. Chapter 8

As it happened, the small group hiding in Iorek’s camp were not the only people around to notice the fire. Fires as big as that gather attention from miles around, and some of the attention it gathered was not pleased to follow the smoke back to its source and find the fire to be manmade.

“Just what do they think they’re up to,” the onlooker muttered, having found a vantage to examine the scene without being smoked herself. It was not nearly as bad as Lee Scoresby feared; the forest was not yet alight, but that was likely to change if things continued unchecked.

“Do they ever think?” asked the onlooker’s companion, close by for once, as they had both been curious about the smoke and there was only so much air available that was clean in the vicinity. The onlooker had a knack for helping the air around her stay clear, but her daemon would have been choking if he hadn’t stayed close.

“It’s the wrong season for a burn,” said the onlooker, displeased. “Gather my sisters; we will need to be sure we turn this, and a single missed spark could spell ruin. I will watch that it does not spread in the interim.”

The bird daemon said nothing, but turned and, careful of his path through the smoke, made for a hidden lake some miles distant. The witch stayed, for of course, it was only a witch who could have sent her daemon from her side, as well as controlling the air currents and keeping herself airborne so as to avoid the smoke and fire while examining the remains of the stronghold.

She did not stay airborne though, still curious over what had come to pass, and she found a place mostly clear of smoke and not so close to the flames as to threaten her (she could not be harmed by cold and did not particularly fear heat either but she could burn; in fact that had been a favored method for killing her kind for centuries. And her branch that granted her flight was made of wood; replacing it would have been a nuisance.).

Two of the buildings by that point were little more than ash, as was the fence closest to them. The third building had more recently destroyed itself, torn apart when the casks of oil met with the fire, and its remains were scattered and burning and the largest danger to the forest. The stronghold itself was built over stone and the nearest trees had been long cleared away to give a better line of sight for the sentries and so the danger of the fire spreading was not as extreme as it could have been, particularly when the morning dew had still wet the earth. The day was progressing, however, and the dew had dried up, and one careless spark was all that would be needed to change the situation fast.

The witch looked at the fire first, and the dead bodies second. She took note of most everything, starting to form the story of what happened, in part from using logic and her eyes, but perhaps in part simply absorbing the knowledge of the stones beneath her feet, the memories of the dead, or something else entirely.

“An armored bear?” she said, her foot placed over the larger footprint made from a paw, invisible to most eyes. That was curious indeed. There had certainly been a battle, and it was not only the bear fighting against men, for bears do not often use pistols. She saw the shackles, and red of the blood on the stones, and her outrage at the fire slowly turned to a deeper curiosity. If she understood the story correctly (and of course she did), an armored bear was travelling as a friend to a man and his little girl. The man had been captured and hurt, perhaps the girl as well, and the bear had come to their rescue, evading a trap meant for him, and all three of them (five, the humans would have daemons) left the dead and the fire behind.

She should scold them over the fire, she supposed. Leaving a fire burning…they should know better. Still, the bear came from a land of ice where perhaps he would not know better because snow does not burn, and the man was clearly injured, perhaps dead (the stones were screaming DEATH), perhaps they could be excused; witches did not care about the affairs of non-witches, but they do take sides all the same, and she was already more than half on the side of the victors even without knowing all the details. She had a soft spot for children and a hatred for bear hunters.

Also she was deeply curious to know the story of the place in its entirety, and the survivors were the best source.

She did not set off at once to find them because the fire did need tending. First things first, she dragged the dead bodies clear, into the forest. She did not want scavengers to come into the stronghold and get singed or spread sparks and ashes, after all. She could have put them into the fire, of course (and some were already long consumed), but why add fuel to what she meant to extinguish? Besides, this was the natural way of things. Then she worked diligently to take away anything that might burn from the vicinity of the flames, stamping out sparks and _feeling_ for hidden burns she may have missed.

Some distance, in the opposite direction of Iorek’s camp, an unmanned zeppelin bobbed along, directed by the wind instead of its propellers, its sole passenger hanging limply from the open hanger, eyes unseeing. The zeppelin’s ropes that had once anchored it to the stronghold had burned, but by chance the burn had not risen to the zeppelin itself. It was almost unnatural how it had managed to last so long in the air on its own, not burnt by a stray spark, not blown into the ground or tossed into a tree or crashed. An unlucky, violent, fiery end could have been its fate; there were many flammable parts and there was no one but a dead man to steer it clear of dangers. But it was not a _likely_ fate; it was not at high speed, the winds were gentle; most likely it would slowly lose altitude like a dying balloon and then meet the earth and never rise again.

What in fact happened was that it caught in a tree, still buoyant and airworthy but no longer blown along. There were unpleasant, scraping, crunching noises as it came to its untimely resting place, but it did not explode or burst into flames.

For a while, the sole passenger continued to hang, his fingers grazing leaves, his skin scratched, blood slowly dripping to the earth, propelled due to gravity rather than the efforts of a beating heart. The other denizens of the forest were naturally timid of the unnatural contraption newly merged with the trees, but after a while the passenger was joined. Carrion eaters are seldom picky about the environs of their meal.

Some miles away, Iorek fretted, and attended to Lee Scoresby, determined that death not be his fate.

Bears, as a rule, do not fret, but it was hard to describe Iorek’s actions in any other way.

“Are we going to leave?” Lyra asked, a sensible question when the air smelled of danger, of smoke, but the answer was far from simple. In the first place, where could they go that would be safe if the forest did blaze? Lee Scoresby had a grounded balloon, which was of no use. Lyra had thought of the zeppelin but dismissed it (rightly, it was far too far to be of any use to them by then). If Iorek could raid what was left of the stronghold, there might have been something to help in fixing the balloon, but firstly the stronghold was utterly destroyed, secondly approaching the fire seemed like folly, and thirdly, even if he could somehow, miraculously fix the balloon…Lee Scoresby was the one who knew how it worked and he was more or less down for the count.

Iorek’s instincts said to move, and a bear rarely ignored its instincts. Of all the bears that might ignore its instincts, however, an armored bear was high on the list. An armored bear could _reason_ , and reason could lead to conflict when reason disagreed with instinct.

And Iorek’s reason told him that moving Lee Scoresby was a bad move.

His fever was rising. It did not matter how liberally Iorek had applied the bloodmoss; already Lee Scoresby had been made to wait long hours between receiving the wounds and having them tended. On top of wounds, the man had also been forced to push himself beyond his strength. He had to face battle, and hardships, and…Iorek was a bear and he did not completely understand the horror of having one’s daemon _manhandled_ by another but he did know enough to be horrified. Bears build their own daemon in the form of their armor, and it did not hurt Iorek for another to touch it, but he remembered when his armor was stollen and how he had felt like half himself, like…like those men had committed a _sin_. To separate a bear from its armor was as sinister as to separate a babe from its mother. There was theft, and then there was _wickedness_. And Lee Scoresby had faced that not once but twice (Iorek had _heard_ what the leader had said to the sentry the day before, even if he had chosen not to share it with Lyra). Iorek could not say how all of this together was making things worse than they might have been, but he knew for a fact they had not made things better.

Lee Scoresby had a rising fever, and he smelled of a wounded animal, ill and weak, _dying_ , and Iorek had already done all he knew to do and still Lee Scoresby’s fever rose.

If Iorek had done all he could, and that was not enough, he did not know how to feel.

Then there was Hester, who was only a little better off than Lee but who had received even less attention. The wolf daemons had broken skin in their skirmishes, and she had been carried and tossed about and shaken in ways a hare was never meant to be. Iorek had not dared to tend to her wounds, not when she so clearly was not ready for anyone to touch her again who was not Lee, and Lee was in no shape to see to her. It was telling that he had never even seemed to notice she needed tending to, because Lee Scoresby always saw to her first in all the time Iorek had known the two. For him to not even realize she needed more from him than closeness said a lot for the state the man was in.

Hester did not want to leave Lee Scoresby’s side, but she saw the sense in tending to herself, if only because her weakness was feeding into Lee’s. Iorek did not dare to touch her, but equally, he did not dare to leave her untouched.

“Can you apply the bloodmoss to yourself?” Iorek asked, once Lee was fully taken care of and there was no excuse the hare could give to avoid her own treatment.

“They got the back of my neck the worst,” Hester admitted quietly. That she could not reach that part of herself easily went unspoken, as did the fact that she did need help. Iorek hesitated, feeling ill at ease for navigating this situation. He was on the verge of suggesting Pan, thinking a fellow daemon might be better received, when Hester spoke again. “I’ll need you to do it.”

They both knew she did not want him to do it. The fact that she was asking anyway touched the bear in a way he scarcely understood himself.

He worked as quickly as he could with as little contact as he could manage. Lee Scoresby slept through it, but fitfully, wincing in tune with Hester, hand reaching blindly for her. She stayed close enough that he could touch but not close enough for his hand to interfere.

Lyra and Pan stayed close too, almost like they wanted to feel the touch of their companions. They had not completely given up their role as sentry, would not until Iorek told them they could relax, but though their eyes turned outwards it was clear their thoughts were inwards.

Lyra had been silent since asking if they were going to leave. This, too, was unusual, and likely a sign the child had been pushed too far as well. She might not have her skin flayed with open wounds for all to see, but that did not mean she was not wounded.

What she needed most, Iorek knew, was Lee Scoresby; Iorek would give her what he could, and he knew the child cared for him, loved him, but he could not give her Lee Scoresby.

Lee Scoresby’s fever was rising, and moving him would tax him in ways he may not have the strength to withstand, but leaving him be may anchor them all to a dangerous place. So the bear fretted, and felt like less of a bear, because he was failing his friends, and he was failing his instincts, and he did not know how to make things right.

Lee Scoresby trusted Iorek to care for Lyra and Pan. It would be safer for the child if they moved further from the fire. It would be worse for her if their move caused Lee Scoresby’s death. Iorek did not sense a growing danger, and they were by water, which was also a measure of safety. They stayed.

For a while Lee slept, not deeply or healingly, but fitfully, his fever and pains offering him no rest.

“I will keep watch now, Lyra Silvertongue,” said Iorek, once he had done all he could for both the man and the daemon. He knew that she wanted to be close to Lee and did not think that would hurt the man. If anything, it might help. And if worst came to worst, it would be better if the child had had a chance for that final closeness.

The child approached Lee slowly, eyes wide. He did not look as bad as before, the worst of his wounds covered in bandages, and a light blanket covering most of him. Hester was there too, but under the blanket and out of sight. The worst visible wound was the bruising across Lee’s face, now glistening slightly from the ointment Iorek had applied.

“He will be alright now, won’t he?” Lyra asked, as she moved to sit next to him, clearly unsure of what to do but wanting to be close. That question almost went as unanswered as her question about leaving, but that seemed unfair to her. Bears do not turn their heads from reality, not even for the sake of the young.

“I have tended his wounds,” Iorek answered, “But some were already infected, and a fever burns him. If the fever does not pass soon, I do not know if he is strong enough to bear it.”

“He can’t die,” Lyra declared, as if saying that would make it so, as if the universe was _fair_. “We saved him. And…and…he saved me. He wouldn’t just…just leave me. He wouldn’t.”

“If it is at all in his power, he will not leave you,” Iorek agreed, because that was true too. He just did not know it would be in the man’s power.

It would have been better for Lee Scoresby if he had fallen into a deep sleep and lay motionless for hours, but he did not, and after a while he became coherent once more, for a certain degree of coherency.

“Hester!” he called, or tried to, his voice weak and hoarse, “The prairies afire! Hester, the lake, the prairie…”

“We’re fine, Lee,” Hester murmured, “We got away just fine.”

Lee did settle for a bit, only to notice Lyra and become concerned again.

“Lyra, honey, you have to get away, the prairie’s ablaze and it will come for you, leave me and get to the lake…”

“Its alright, Mr. Scoresby,” Lyra said, “There’s been a rain and that put out the prairie fire. Don’t you feel the water? You just rest.”

The lie calmed the man faster than explaining the truth could have. The water part was real enough; at Iorek’s suggestion she had been bathing his burning brow with a damp cloth. This had somewhat soothed the fever, but was likely also what helped to rouse him.

During these moments of semi-coherency, Iorek got Lee to drink, aware of how fast dehydration could drain a person during an illness. He remembered to get Lyra to have something as well, and would have felt better if Lee could have eaten, but the man seemed incapable, groaning and turning away when presented anything more taxing than tea.

“Please,” Lyra said when he turned his head from the weak broth, and then Hester said the first words she had said for hours, “You gotta eat, Lee, it’ll give you strength.”

Between the two women, Lee allowed it, but it did little good, because moments later he was rolled on his side and heaving it back up again, only just missing his sealskin bed. Being somewhat still outdoors the mess was easy enough to clean; Iorek dragged the mattress slightly away and then buried what little liquid hadn’t soaked into the ground.

If he noticed a bit of blood in the mess, he said nothing. He knew Lee had taken several blows to his soft organs, and that there were dangers there, but there was nothing he knew to do about it that he was not already doing.

“That was…that was not fun,” Lee murmured, perhaps deriving some good from what little broth had made its way into his system, because he did seem slightly revived. He looked a bit embarrassed as he watched Iorek take care of the mess. He turned his glassy eyes to look at Lyra, and tried to give her a grin because he did not care for how worried she looked, and his hand petted Hester gently, aware enough when he neared a wound to avoid it, and both taking comfort from the contact. And then his eyes moved past Lyra and Pan, to something no one else saw.

The man blinked, eyes still glassy and not completely focused, and Lyra turned to look in spite of herself, knowing as she did it was likely a fever vision. As she thought, there was no one there, of course there was no one there; no one could creep into the camp invisible, not only to their eyes but to Iorek’s nose and Hester and Pans’ ears.

“It will be alright, Mr. Scoresby,” said Lyra, moving to mop at the man’s glistening brow with her damp cloth. “We’ll try again in a bit.”

Lee Scoresby did not turn towards her, his eyes still looking past her at something not there, an expression of confusion on his face.

“serf in a peck call uh?” he said, nonsense sounding syllables, and Lyra bit her lip in worry, then tried to smile so she would not worry him. Whenever he noticed her worrying, that is when he seemed to get worse, working himself to exhaustion trying to ease that worry and doing just the opposite.

“You’ll be alright,” Lyra repeated, and hoped with all her heart that this was not another lie.


	9. Chapter 9

Serafina Pekkala, queen of the Lake Enara clan, listened to her sister witch’s story while standing in the ruins of the stronghold as other members of her clan busily set about quenching the last of the flames. Anna Koskinen, the one who had first observed the smoke and reported it back to the clan, retold all she had observed, her eyes alight with interest and curiosity.

“An armored bear, and a man and his little girl, have you ever known such a thing?”

“A rare friendship,” Serafina Pekkala agreed. It was not that there had not been good relations between armored bears and humans before, though perhaps Anna Koskinen would not know of any as she was young (for a witch) and tensions in recent years between bears and humans had grown; humans were responsible for the shrinking ice and bears, in turn, more inclined to encroach into human settlements. True friendship, and not simple alliance or trading partnerships, was rarer still; but not unheard of. Serafina Pekkala personally knew a bear and a man who had one of the strongest bonds she had seen.

“I knew a man and a bear who travelled together for a time,” she said, her expression thoughtful as she surveyed the would-be bear trap, the shackles, and the blood on the stone. Under her bare feet the stones remembered violence, clung to vivid emotions left for those who could read them like splashes of blood. There was fear, anger, pain, horror…love. An unlikely emotion in a battle but also not unheard of. Comrade in arms was a strong bond, but this was different, more like…family.

Still tasting the traces of what came before (and there was something _ugly_ amidst the other emotions, not hatred, something else, glee maybe, but glee for another’s suffering), she thoughtfully added, “but the man I knew had no daughter, nor any interest in women as might create one. Still…I will follow them and find what there is to know.”

“I am willing to join you,” Anna Koskinen said, and Serafina Pekkala had no reason to curb the other witch’s curiosity, so the two went together. They had little trouble following the tracks despite the pains Iorek had taken, even through the water, for it was not the prints or their scent that they tracked but their very essence, and that was not a thing easily masked.

When they drew close, both women paused. 

“An armored bear is nothing to laugh at,” the witch queen whispered, even as she directed the air around them to carry the sound away from the camp, along with their own scent. “If he proves not to be a friend and desires to attack us, he could do us great harm.”

Anna Koskinen drew an arrow at those words, holding it at ready, but Serafina Pekkala shook her head.

“We have no reason to think he would see us as his enemy, but they did just survive an attack. Caution is best. I will hide my presence as completely as I can, and enter their camp to find out what I can. You must stay back in case of the unexpected and come to my aid if I call for you.”

A different sort of people might have objected to their queen placing herself in a dangerous position. Witches did not see this action as a danger, however; Anna Koskinen trusted the other witch to know her own abilities, and even if it were dangerous, she trusted her queen to handle it. If she protested at all, it was the delaying in answering her own curiosity, and that protest was only through a look of disappointment as she nodded her agreement.

Serafina Pekkala took the time to turn herself invisible, or as invisible as it is possible for anyone to be. A better word would be unnoticeable, which was even more useful than invisible when approaching a camp that included a bear, who had a wonderful sense of smell, and whose ears were rather keen as well.

The witch approached slowly and as silently as possible anyway, perhaps even with a bit of reluctance. Not because she might be approaching foes…but because she might be approaching friends and perhaps feared what she would find.

Then she was in the camp, a clever camp that she never would have noticed or found out if she weren’t a witch and in tune with the forest and tracking their essence besides.

She was not surprised when she found she did know both the man and the bear. She was not surprised, but nor was she glad to encounter old friends.

Serafina Pekkala was three hundred years old, or thereabouts, and she had known many whose lifetime spanned only a fraction of hers; all witches had learned to accept the gift of time spent with those much shorter lived, to rejoice in what time they had, short or long, and accept those moments as moments, and that they would always end. That did not mean that Serafina Pekkala wanted to bear witness to the death of one such friend, particularly if that death came long before old age could claim him.

If Iorek smelled Lee Scoresby as a wounded animal, then Serafina Pekkala saw him as a fading essence.

Then the man turned his fevered eyes and _looked directly at he_ r. It should not have been possible; she had made herself utterly unnoticeable and she could feel her power working still. The girl at his side turned to look and it was clear she noticed nothing, her eyes briefly focusing on the witch before unfocusing again and sliding away. The girl was a surprise, even knowing all along there was a girl, when did Lee Scoresby acquire her? She did not have the man’s features, but her care for him was unmistakable, and his for her.

“Serafina Pekkala,” Lee Scoresby managed to say, or some approximation, his voice was rough and slurred, his lip swollen and split. The fact that he noticed her there, _saw her_ , was not a good sign for his health. It was likely he was already slipping towards death, an in between stage, allowing him to draw his eyes to what his brain should have been telling him to ignore.

Serafina Pekkala loved him. Not as a lover (they never had been lovers), nor as a sister, nor even as a friend. She loved him in the way she loved the elk that ran in the forest, or the hawk as it flew in the air, or the star as it danced its light over her skin. She loved in the way of a witch, which is fiercely and completely, even knowing her heart would all too soon be broken, because love was worth the break.

She expected to find Lee Scoresby and Iorek Byrinson from the very first moment she heard there was a man and a bear together, and she knew coming in that Lee Scoresby had been injured, but it was still horrible to find all her expectations confirmed.

And when Lee Scoresby looked directly at her, his gaze _pierced_ , and when he spoke her name, she felt the words as if he had dropped them like pebbles into her hand.

Then the girl turned her head again and startled, and on the other side Iorek Byrinson whipped his head towards her as well, making a noise that under most any other circumstance might have made her laugh, because it was a growl, but higher pitched than she had ever heard a bear make, and it was clear she had startled him.

It was also clear that, in her own startlement, she had lost her concentration and allowed her invisibility to slip away. She saw no point in calling it back now. It had done its task, allowing her to find out if the members of the camp were strangers or friends, and she already understood it to be the latter.

The girl was, quite naturally, afraid, first shrinking away and clutching her daemon to her heart in the form of a mouse, then abruptly girl and daemon shifted forward. They were putting themselves between the witch and Lee Scoresby. The bear, on the other hand, had recovered even more quickly and it was clear he did not see her as a foe, despite her sudden appearance. There would be no fight here.

“Serafina Pekkala,” said the bear, his tone part annoyed (she _had_ intruded in his camp and bears could be territorial) but also part relieved. “Will you help Lee Scoresby?” He clearly had no questions about her ability to help but nor did he presume she must. There was a reason Serafina Pekkala liked him.

“And Hester,” Lee Scoresby added.

“I’ll heal fine, Lee,” came Hester’s voice from beneath the blanket. “You’re the one who just upchucked his broth.”

Lee Scoresby wrinkled his nose at that.

“Who is she? Where’s her daemon?” the girl asked, towards Iorek. Then, towards the witch, “I’ll shoot you if you try to hurt us.”

She had the pistol to do it too, not aimed, yet, (Lee Scoresby had taught her well, never aim at something you don’t mean to shoot for sure) but at the ready to swing up. Different people than those present would likely have reacted with horror or condensation or some mixture of the two; a child holding a gun on an adult. Iorek looked on her with approval and Lee Scoresby actually laughed out loud, albeit weakly, saying something so hoarse and soft it was near impossible to make out, but might have been, ‘that’s my girl’. It was up to the bear to actually calm the child.

“This is Serafina Pekkala, queen of the witches,” Iorek said. “She is no friend of those men in the stronghold. You may lay down the pistol. Serafina Pekkala, this is Lyra Silvertongue. It is her who made it possible for me to fight Iofur and win back my place among my people.”

Still looking confused, perhaps not expecting the reactions she had gotten, the child did slowly lower the pistol to the ground.

“Queen of the witches?” she asked, her eyes wide with awe and interest.

Serafina Pekkala smiled, and said, “At least over one clan. It is nice to meet you, Lyra Silvertongue. I see you are a formidable defender of your family. There is much of your father in you.”

The girl hesitated, then said, “You know Lord Asriel?”

“Lord Asriel? No. I have a sister who is acquainted, but I do not know him.”

“Then how do you know I’m like him?” asked Lyra.

“I speak of Lee Scoresby,” answered Serafina Pekkala.

“Now, Serafina…” Lee said, clearly ready to be argumentative, never mind that he was as weak as a newborn kitten and Serafina Pekkala had eyes to see with. At any rate, he did not get much further, because the child, with true happiness in her voice, spoke again.

“You think I’m like Mr. Scoresby?”

“I do,” answered Serafina Pekkala, then, “Allow me to look at Lee Scoresby, and I will see what I can do for him.”

The child looked surprised at that too, perhaps not expecting to be taken so seriously as Lee Scoresby’s guardian, but the child did step aside at last.

“Iorek knows you, and Mr. Scoresby knows you, so I suppose you must be good. And you are a witch,” this was said with some awe and curiosity, “So I guess you can help.”

The witch smiled at the child, then moved forward to do as promised.

“Serafina Pekkala,” said Lee Scoresby when she knelt at his side. “A strange way to meet again.”

“You left a fire burning in my forest,” the witch answered, tone scolding but expression kind. “Of course I came.”

Lee laughed again, which turned into a sort of weak cough, and the witch could almost see what little strength he had draining away. She held her smile, because to do otherwise in the presence of the dying was unthinkable, and she started her true assessment. She pulled away the blanket to see, ran her hands above his body, concentrating on what she could feel. Her hand brushed near Hester, who was huddled at the man’s side, not on him (because there was not a place she could lie that would not have hurt the man), but close. The hare shied away when the witch’s hand neared and Serafina Pekkala paused, because she had no intention on touching the man’s daemon and it was telling that the hare thought she _might_ , and sought to evade the touch. She remembered those ugly emotions splashed back over the stones at the stronghold and she wondered but did not ask. Instead, she continued her assessment, more slowly, careful she came nowhere close to Hester.

The girl knelt at Lee Scoresby’s head, whispering reassurances, watching the witch’s movements closely, her daemon a bird that flitted with anxious energy. She could feel Iorek watching as well, and beyond them her sister witch, still waiting. A less self-possessed person might have felt self-conscious with all that attention, but witches are used to receiving attention, good and bad, when among non-witches and she did not mind. What she did mind was the one set of eyes that were not watching her. Lee Scoresby had closed his eyes and was fast losing awareness.

Then Serafina Pekkala was finished in assessing but she did not like the answer she must share.

“Lee Scoresby is fading,” she said. “Without help, he will die.”

“No!” cried the child’s voice.

“And what help does Lee Scoresby need?” asked Iorek, his voice calm but his spirit clearly agitated to those who could _see_.

“I will gather my sisters and prepare a spell that will help him heal,” said Serafina Pekkala, “But such spells take time, and time Lee Scoresby does not have. He is weakened by infection and fever; that is bad. He also has a wound inside that could not be reached by the bloodmoss; it bleeds and weakens him further. That is worse. He might survive the fever with help, but he will not survive the bleed past another hour.”

“I feared this,” said Iorek.

“But, but, there must be something you can do to help!” the child cried, tears running down her face, her daemon swiftly changing to something soft and furry that she held in her hands against her heart. “You can’t just let Mr. Scoresby die!”

“And we will not,” Serafina Pekkala answered. “I know where the bleed is exactly.” And she looked at the bear when she said that. He nodded in understanding.

“I will need to create a fire to heat the knife on,” he said. “And I will need a forges flame to aid in stopping the bleed. But I do not believe we have the time to build such a fire.”

“The fire at the stronghold still burns, despite my sisters’ efforts,” answered the witch. She feared Iorek would say that was too far, because she did not think Lee Scoresby would survive being moved closer, but the bear only nodded again, then turned to face the child.

“Lyra Silvertongue,” he said, “I will go now and I will return and I will do what I can for Lee Scoresby. You must be brave and you must stay by his side, so if he does slip away from us, he will not die alone.”

“I won’t let him slip away from us,” Lyra said, voice firm through her tears, as if she had the power to command such things.

“Hold,” said Serafina Pekkala when Iorek turned to run at once, having taken a small metal box from within the camp and secured it to his own armor. “My sisters won’t know you yet.”

And she went out of the camp and called, “Anna Koskinen!” because it would be rude to call her into another’s camp, particularly now that she was sure they were friends.

The witch flew down at once, arrow still held notched but not drawn.

“These people are friends to us,” Serafina Pekkala declared, almost like stating the word of a ritual, which, in a way, it was; the witch knew that Anna Koskinen had likely been listening in on everything that had come to pass with great curiosity and so already knew all, but now it was her queen declaring people her friend, and so officially marking them as a Friend to all in her clan.

“I hear, sister, and I will guide the bear to the fire and gather our sisters to prepare the spell,” Anna Koskinen answered, with perhaps a bit too much haste (she hadn’t waited to hear those instructions be given formally, after all) but she was young and this was a situation that called for haste so Serafina Pekkala did not rebuke her, but embraced her and said, “Then go!”

Then the witch queen returned into the hidden camp, alone with the two humans and their daemons.

“You can really help him, can’t you?” asked the girl the moment she reappeared. The child had returned to bathing the man’s brow with a damp cloth, still crying, but silently.

“Lyra,” the witch heard the girl’s daemon whisper, “Don’t question her.”

“I can’t help it, Pan,” the girl whispered back.

The witch kindly pretended not to hear their private conversation and answered the question that had been directed towards her. “It is as I said. He is fading. We will do all we can to help him, but there are some things beyond our power.”

Witches do not lie to children, not even to comfort them. At any rate, the girl wiped away her tears instead of breaking down further, and said, “I’m glad you say so. Because if you promised he would be alright then I would know you were a liar and I’d never trust you near him.”

Lyra had to keep wiping away the tears, because they wouldn’t stop, but the child seemed determined to work around them in order to help Lee Scoresby as best she could. Serafina Pekkala allowed her her tears, understanding that comfort would not be welcome, that what she could do most to help was to do her best with the man the girl cried over.

“Lee Scoresby,” said the witch, feeling his dwindling energy, and _pushing_ , willing to share some of herself if it would hold the man to the world a while longer. “You are young yet, and you have a child; you need to stay.”

Iorek returned swiftly, even more swiftly than Serafina Pekkala expected; armored bears can be fast when motivated, and it seemed he had found fire hot enough without needing to tend to long to the blaze. He returned almost as quickly as he left, but not quite, because in his paw he carried a knife. It was almost humorous how delicately he held what was a surprisingly tiny blade in his great paw, cautious that the blade touched nothing.

“It is ready,” he said, “or as ready as it can be, considering the length from the fire I had to carry everything, but building one here would be slower still. Haste is needed. Show me where to cut.”

“Where to cut?!” the girl asked in great alarm, staring at the knife. She had not understood before that moment what they needed to do in order to fix a bleed happening inside the man. There was no time for explaining, either; the bleed was the greatest current danger to the man and it needed fixing _now_.

“But,” said Lyra, protesting, face white and aghast.

“It’s fine, Lyra,” said an unexpected voice. Hester crept up Lee’s side until she was by his shoulder, close to the girl, close enough she could have touched her, but of course she would not.

“My sisters will keep him asleep and still,” Serafina Pekkala said; “He must not move.”

“Where do I cut?” Iorek repeated patiently, holding the knife at ready. It was not hot; whatever had been done with the fire had mostly cooled by then, but for all its delicateness it looked razor sharp and delicately curved. In fact, the blade was roughly the size and shape of one of Iorek’s claws, but metal, and with a much finer edge. This was done very deliberately, for if there was a blade a bear understood the use of better than anything, it was his own claws. In fact, Lee Scoresby could not have asked for a better surgeon to attend him; the bear understood anatomy with the perfection of a true predator, even if humans were not his prey of choice, and despite his enormous size he had an incredibly delicate touch. This was what allowed for the fine intricacy in his armor and it was what would now save Lee Scoresby’s life.

“Sisters, help me!” Serafina Pekkala called, and more witches appeared almost like magic (and they _were_ witches, but in this case they simply moved with silence, swiftness, and grace), and they joined hands, and those closest put their hands over Lee Scoresby, but whatever they were doing was not evident because the man already lay still and pale.

“Sleep now, Hester,” Serafina Pekkala ordered, and the hare did, which showed she did still trust the witch or she would have fought against it and she did not. “Now, child, do not interfere, but you may stay and watch if you will.”

Lyra nodded, eyes wide, too shocked to even cry anymore, holding her daemon close.

Then Serafina Pekkala ran her hands around where she knew to be the wound, found it, slowly bleeding, an ugly bleed that drained strength over a long time while hiding its nature beneath the skin.

“Cut…here,” said the witch.

And Iorek did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Lee Scoresby in my head is a weird hybrid of the TV series and the books; The Lee Scoresby of the book was old, perhaps not an old man but not a young one. Lin-Manuel Miranda is younger. Likely aided by being an actual visual, I tend to picture the actor when I picture the man, but with the more honorable characteristics of the book character. That said, those reading this story are free to picture Lee Scoresby at any age, with any look you wish. So when Serafina Pekkala calls him ‘young yet’…that could be because she is a three hundred year old witch and sees everyone as ‘young’, it could be because Lee Scoresby is too young to die because he had yet to fall into the decline of old age despite having lived many years, or it could be that he is still a young(ish) man by anyone’s standards. I leave it up to you to decide how you want to imagine him.


	10. Chapter 10

Bears do not hesitate, not when they know what the right action is to take. Iorek had no tremble in his paw when he immediately brought the blade to the exact spot the witch had indicated and drew it into his friend’s flesh.

Blood bubbled up immediately, quite a lot of it. A human surgeon would likely have been working to soak up the blood (or his assistant would) and then reached in to try and clamp and sew up the bleed before sewing up the cut he had made. The bear surgeon ignored the blood entirely but drew open the same box he had carefully taken earlier from the camp to the fire.

Inside was a bit of metal, still forgefire hot, for the box had properties that allowed it to hold the extreme heat inside. The metal was barely a sliver, still soft and malleable as clay, and how that was achieved in so little time was in part luck in finding a particularly hot spot in the dying blaze, and perhaps in part because witches were good at elements, mostly air rather than fire, but air blown the right way can fan an ember into an inferno. The bear had told them what was needed, and they helped.

Now he hooked the sliver of metal with the knife and immediately, before it had a chance to cool and harden (and this, he was aware, would happen _fast_ now that it was out of the box, almost too fast), he put it inside the open wound. The skin sizzled under the heat, and the bear could of course not see clearly into the wound, there was far too much blood, but he had a nose and senses a human surgeon did not, and he felt for the place where the blood came from, and he knew when the burning metal had found it because he sensed the stop of the flow. With a surgeon’s precision, with only the use of a knife to manipulate the sliver of metal, he managed to direct it to bend as he willed over the open bleed, never allowing the blade to touch and make things worse.

And then the metal was cooled, and unmoving, wielded over the wound as surely as one of the plates in the bears armor covered _him_ , and the bear withdrew the knife and, with the aid of the witches, turned the man to allow gravity to help in draining the blood that had been oozing out of the wound beneath Lee Scoresby’s skin.

There was a short, but concerning moment, when none knew for certain that the job was done correctly, that the metal fragment would not wash away in the flow of blood, tearing upon the recently cauterized hole, but neither bear nor witch sensed any such thing. The excess blood drained out, at first almost black, then red, and the patch held.

Lyra and Pan watched this happen, eyes wide and shocked, not understanding but trusting that this was a necessary thing.

“And now the bloodmoss,” said Iorek, and it was packed into the wound, less than the bear would have liked for his store of it was almost entirely depleted by this adventure, but not much was needed, for the wound was remarkably small, barely more than the width of the knife which was the width of a bear claw. Then the wound was bound and it was done.

The stench of blood, and burnt skin, and illness was strong, and Lee Scoresby lay as pale as a ghost, glistening with ointments and sweat and blood, but he still breathed.

“Now we go to prepare our spell. Watch over him until we return,” Serafina Pekkala announced, and the witches left them alone.

The first thing Iorek wanted to do was to move Lee Scoresby away from the mess of blood that his bed had become, and with this in mind he first went to the stream to wash his paws (not nearly as bloody as one would expect), and his knife (which was exactly as bloody as one would expect), and then rolled out a second sealskin. Only, as he prepared to delicately slide the man over, and then to move the new skin further still from the mess, he realized there was no way to also move Hester, still asleep against Lee’s side, without touching her. Iorek knew well the hare would not be easy with being moved, but nor did he want to separate the two, even by a few feet. So instead he cleaned away the blood as well as he could, and pulled the blanket back over him.

Only now, when it was clear that everything was finished, did Lyra dare to distract the bear with her own questions.

“What did you do, with the burning metal? You left it inside him?”

“That was sky-iron, broken off of my own armor; it will not harm him as earth-iron might and it will hold the bleed closed even as it cauterized the wound. He will not bleed again.” Not from that bleed anyway.

“A piece of your armor is inside him?” Lyra asked, eyes wide, for she understood what the bear’s armor was to him.

“It was the only metal with the right properties for the task,” the bear answered, and if the girl hadn’t known better, she would have thought Iorek thought it no great matter, that he only used the best tool for the job and it had no more import than that. “It could burn hot and be molded but cool without losing its strength, and cool quickly enough to not do lasting damage if left inside the wound and, as I said, it will not poison him as other metals might.”

“Oh, Iorek,” said Lyra, who did know better and was not fooled by the bear’s tone, “He will get better. He just has to, after…after you did _that_ for him.” And she gave Iorek a hug, which the bear allowed, even going so far as to gently place one of his great paws upon her shoulder. 

Lee Scoresby was not yet cured though, for as the witch had said, he still burned with fever and now he lay utterly still and he did not stir. This worried Lyra, who was used to him restless in his fever, and it seemed a bad sign that now he was beyond even that. In fact, had she known, this had less to do with him slowly dying and more to do with the witches, who had previously convinced his body to relax into the deep sleep needed for the surgery to not rouse him into moving at an inopportune moment. The deep sleep was just what he needed most, and the longer he could sleep the better was his chance of healing and overcoming his host of injuries and infection.

Lyra did not know this, though, and to her it seemed like he was already half in the grave, and she wiped away the sweat that covered his face, and worried, and tried to turn her thoughts to lighter matters.

“It was funny, meeting a witch,” she said as she sat, staring at Lee Scoresby’s still form and wiping him with the damp cloth. She avoided the swollen bruises, which mostly left his forehead and the right half of his face, and his neck down to the first of his many bandages (Iorek had completely depleted that supply as well and then repurposed an old bit of cloth he had decided clean enough for the task). She was speaking to Pan rather than to Iorek, though the bear was still nearby, looming, rather as if he stood guard over the sleeping man and hare. Had Lyra been able to see with eyes beyond herself, she would have thought he seemed to be guarding her as well, but she could not and only thought he guarded his good friend, and loved him for it.

“She didn’t have a daemon,” said Pan, in answer to her witch comment and with a shudder, for the two of them knew of nothing more unnatural.

“She does,” said Iorek, without looking at them. “All witches have birds for daemons, and they have the ability to travel far from their side.”

“Don’t they get lonely, being so far apart?” Lyra asked, hugging Pan to her all the tighter. Imagine her Pantalaimon wandering far from her side! It was too terrible to contemplate, but the witches did not look like they were in pain from it.

“No more than I get lonely, I would guess,” answered the bear, who of course had armor and not a daemon. Whether he meant to say they did get lonely, or they did not, Lyra could not tell and did not like to ask because she did not like to think of Iorek as wandering around alone. It was good that he was a king again and had his people, and it was good that he had Lee Scoresby even when he was not a king. Lyra was glad Iorek had come with them.

“It was funny, though, wasn’t it…what she said about me being like Mr. Scoresby.” Lyra said next, still mostly to Pan but not minding if Iorek answered. She was looking for anything to think about that was not how still Mr. Scoresby still lay.

“He looks on you like a daughter,” Iorek said, only repeating what he had told her the day before, still a shocking thing to hear, but the shape of those words were starting to fit inside Lyra’s head, and even moreso in her heart.

“I was proud…so proud when I learned Lord Asriel was not only my uncle, but my father,” Lyra whispered. “But…but Lord Asriel never…well, but it is not fair to not give him a chance, and of course we are going to him because he did want me, after all…but…if I could have a second father…it would be Mr. Scoresby.”

She seemed more than ever to be speaking to Pan, or perhaps just to herself, and Iorek did not answer her this time. Pan did.

“Lord Asriel does not want us,” the daemon said, his feelings far less confused on the matter as he bristled into a hedgehog. “Lee Scoresby does.”

“It isn’t like that, Pan,” Lyra tried to explain, setting the daemon on the ground in front of her when he became to difficult to cuddle. “Our father is an important man, and…he has his work, and that is important.”

“Lee Scoresby had his work, and he always made time for us anyway, no matter how many questions we asked while he was busy. He slowed down and let us help. And you know we made him go slower.”

“We have to give Lord Asriel a chance, Pan, we just have to. He’s…he’s blood. We _belong_ to him.”

“He never protects us when it mattered. He told you to spy and then said he wouldn’t protect you if you were caught. Lee Scoresby protects us, and when we get lost anyway, he comes after us.”

“I can’t just trade fathers, Pan, it just doesn’t work like that. It en’t right, if we don’t at least give him a chance.”

“And if we give him a chance, and he doesn’t want us?”

“Well then…then…I guess we have someone who _does_.”

“That I do,” whispered a voice, rough and rasping, and Lyra, who had not quite been crying because she felt almost cried out, looked in surprise to see Lee Scoresby’s eyes open.

“You’re awake!” she exclaimed, surprised and relieved. She really should not have been as relieved as she was, because he had not rested as long or as deeply as his illness needed him to, but it had been two hours since the witches had drawn him down into slumber and their effects had worn away.

“You have bled a lot and need more fluids,” Iorek said by way of greeting towards the newly awakened man. “Drink this now.”

The bear helped the man to sit up slightly, giving him a rough, “let me do the work,” when Lee tried to help and his face winced at the increase in pain from his many wounds, not least the most recent surgical cut in his side. He let the bear do the work, and let him pour water down his throat, slowly and carefully, remembering the way the last thing he had drunk had come back up.

“It’s cold, en’t it?” Lee murmured when he had enough, some of the cool water dribbling down his front, and he shivered, and when he was lain down he pulled at the blanket to more fully cover himself and Hester, who slept on.

“You have lost blood,” said Iorek solemnly. “And you have a fever. That makes you feel cold.”

“That your way of saying it en’t cold?” Lee commented, sleepily, his eyes already closed. “You’re a polar bear, Iorek; you’d feel warm if it were snowing.”

“Do you need another blanket?” asked Lyra, who wanted to help.

“Please,” said Lee Scoresby, who was still shivering, which in turn reminded him of the pains up and down his body. The bloodmoss helped to numb some of the pain but it could only do so much.

“No,” said Iorek. Lyra looked at Mr. Scoresby, then at Iorek, and reluctantly let go of the blanket she had started to drag out.

Lee Scoresby did not protest or complain again, and for a moment he seemed to fall back asleep. It was clear, though, that this was not the same deep sleep as before, but a fitful sleep. Iorek frowned, bringing his nose down close to the man.

“His fever rises,” he said.

“Don’t fret,” said Lee Scoresby, who was not quite as a sleep as he appeared. “Be fine. Ser-fina Pekk-la’ll get me right as rain.”

Serafina Pekkala certainly intended to try. It seemed a cruel joke if Lee Scoresby got away safe from a gunfight, survived an internal bleed, only to die of infection just before the spell that could have saved him was completed.

But Serafina Pekkala had intimate knowledge of how unfair the universe could be, and how imperfectly even a witch’s spell could save a person dying of illness, and she readied herself for whatever outcome this day might lead to: death, salvation, or something in-between.

Defeating illness was harder to achieve than most any other healing spell, because it was essentially an attempt to strengthen one life while at the same time extinguishing another, and for one who is meant to hold all life as sacred, it takes an act of true sacrifice to create the spell, and even then it only aids the host in destroying the disease rather than going after the disease itself.

What few understood was what it truly meant to hold all life sacred, because clearly witches do kill; they enter battle and are deadly with their arrows and they are not vegetarians. They hold life sacred in the same way a gardener understands the necessity of pruning and weeding for the sake of his plants. What Serafina was about to do however, for Lee Scoresby’s sake, was more akin to chopping down a fruit tree just as its fruits were on the verge of ripening than the pruning of dead branches for the health of the tree. There were few people she would make that sacrifice for; her son had been one and he had still died. Her son’s father had been another, and he lived.

Lee Scoresby’s life was in her hand, and she already knew that she could fail.

She asked her sisters to prepare the necessary herbs; that alone would take time and they must be fresh and never prepared ahead of time. Many spells worked in that manner, losing all potency beyond the natural healing powers of the herbs when not used fresh.

She herself went in search of an arctic hare. Most any animal would do, but for the spell to be its most potent, she needed an arctic hare, young and full of life and vitality. She called her daemon Kaisa to help her; he had been among those left to watch over the remains of the fire while the witches were busy seeing to Lee Scoresby, but now she needed his eyes because they were sharper than hers in watching for animals scurrying in the undergrowth.

Hares were not as thick on the ground here as further north, but nor were they unknown, and Kaisa found her three. Had they been hunting for food, Serafina Pekkala would have shot the hares without a thought or worry because it is natural for some animals to be prey. But they were hunting for a different reason, and she notched no arrows.

The first hare Kaisa spotted, the witch dived down to and scooped it up by its feet. Then she held it and calmed it, a thing she could do because she could share her lack of ill intent and the hare, sensing her nature, saw in her a friend.

“I ask of you the gift of your life,” she said to it. Hares do not speak a language, exactly, but this one understood what was asked and said, in a way the witch understood but without words, “I have young ones on the way, I cannot sacrifice them.” This the witch felt at once to be true, and, slightly embarrassed to have made such a mistake, let the hare go.

The second was male, but also unwilling. There lay the true difficulty of the spell; it required a sacrifice and that sacrifice must be willing and the one committing the sacrifice must be fully aware of the awful thing she does (no nameless victim, she must first know the one she kills, even if only briefly) and do it anyway.

The third hare…the third hare was young, so young the witch almost let it go unasked. But she held her in her hands, and the hare said, (without words, of course), “How wonderful you are! I did not know there was such wonder in the world! See us flying! See us in the trees like a bird!”

The hare had the very spirit of an aeronaut, and Serafina Pekkala had to choke back tears, because she knew at once that this was the hare, and she loved her, and wished with all her heart that there was no question to ask. It would be cruel to ask. It would mean Lee Scoresby’s certain death if she didn’t.

It was not that she loved Lee Scoresby more or less than the hare she now held; love does not work like that, not for witches, there are no _degrees_ , just different bonds. She was a witch though, and witches understand the brevity of life, and witches are able to do what is hard without hesitation or guilt. Sorrow, yes, but not guilt, not so long as she behaved true.

“I ask of you the gift of your life.” And the hare did balk, as anyone would. She was young, at the start of her life, feeling the wonder of being alive.

“This is your wish?” asked the hare (without words). And the hare loved the witch. And the hare said yes. “If your hands will take my life, then that will be better than the wolf or fox or owl. I would die for someone I love and who I know loves me.”

Serafina did not smile for the hare as she drew out her knife, because hares see smiles as bared teeth and not as joy, but she let the hare feel her joy as she slit the hare’s throat. Then, when the life was gone, she broke it open and took the still heart, and laid the small corpse on the forest floor.

“Will you leave her?” asked Kaisa. “She wanted to go to _you_ , not to another. And it could make a nourishing morsel for an ill man, perhaps more nourishing than any other.”

And feeling rebuked, the witch took the hare’s body back into her arms and took it with her when she returned to her sisters to complete the spell, her hands wet with the hare’s blood, the heart held delicately in her palm.

The spell took half the day to fully prepare. Half a day was a long time, when the one it was prepared for was as weak as Lee Scoresby had become. Still, Lee Scoresby had been full of vitality and health before the onset of the illness (before the beating), and he had a strong will (strong reasons to live). Iorek had stopped the bleed that was weakening him beyond his strength, and even managed to get more broth into him after a time, some of which did not come up again.

In the late afternoon, Serafina Pekkala returned into the little camp, her hands still stained by the hare’s blood, bringing with her a cup of something herbal and pink.

“Is that the spell?” asked Lyra, hopeful and excited, sure that now, now Lee Scoresby would be fine.

“It is. He must drink it all down.”

Iorek frowned at that. “Lee Scoresby has had trouble keeping broth down,” he said.

“Then we will have to help him, for if it does not stay down, the spell will be in vain.”

“And…and you will have to start all over again from scratch?” Lyra asked, the idea of simply not trying again not even occurring to her, only the knowledge that it had taken such a long time in the first place.

“He will keep it down,” was all the witch replied, not disabusing the girl of her notion.

Iorek helped Lee Scoresby sit up. This time, though he woke at being manhandled (or rather, bearhandled), Lee said nothing and made no move to try and help raise himself up. He felt weak as he never had in his life, like his body was not his to move. He drank without protest too, not even wrinkling his nose at the taste, which was sharply herbal and also a bit tinny, like drinking nails, and not altogether pleasant. It stayed down, and they lowered him back to his bed.

“Now I will prepare a nourishing broth while the spell does its work. His fever will likely rise, very quickly, but briefly. If he survives the burn, he will get well quickly after that.”

“If?” asked Lyra, alarmed.

“Prepare more water, the cooler the better, and you may help him to fight,” Serafina Pekkala said. And then she left, to prepare a broth as she said.


	11. Chapter 11

Lee Scoresby was surrounded by people who would fight for him with all their being, but the fight he now fought was one he had to fight alone.

It did not take long for Serafina Pekkala’s prediction to come true. Lee Scoresby had been running a fever before, higher than comfortable but not dangerous except as a sign of the infection ravaging his weakened body. Now it was like a furnace had ignited inside him, burning him from the inside out.

He writhed under its throes, and then from pain, the beating and the fever combining to bring an agony he was powerless to fight against, too incoherent to even completely understand what happened to him, let alone fight against moaning or voicing his pain.

“Lee?” murmured Hester. Whatever spell the witch had placed on her that drew her down into a deep slumber had long since worn off. For a while, her own injuries, and Lee’s, had been enough before to induce her to sleep (with much more success than Lee) and she had managed to sleep the long hours away while Lee had lain restless. Now, though, it seemed this final fever was too much, and the hare was drawn from her own exhausted, healing sleep by Lee’s pain to find Lee burning with fever and half delirious.

“Th’prairie,” the man said, words so slurred as to nearly be incomprehensible, “Fire…”

“Lee…the prairie en’t here, the fire is put out,” Hester tried to explain, her voice gentler and more tender than the others even knew it could be. While the affection between the two was obvious to any who watched them, her affection usually took the form of scolding or sarcasm; words to steady him or distract him when needed, and when something softer was called for she usually went with physical contact rather than soothing words.

She was soothing now, though, gentle, her own voiced strained from their shared pain, but not delirious as she was not the one who _burned_.

“You’ll be alright, Mr. Scoresby,” Lyra said, doing her best to help with water from the stream, but her little rag seemed quite inadequate in the face of such pain.

Lee Scoresby would not be soothed, but kept muttering words that were near incomprehensible, though Hester seemed to follow him well enough. “whe…pafir..gotta..gotta,”

“He en’t in the fire, Lee, he’s…he’s safe as he can be,” said the hare in response to what sounded utter nonsense to Iorek, Lyra, and Pan. Then Hester started to sing, something low and soft that was not exactly a lullaby. It was a familiar tune; the others had heard Lee and Hester singing it together around the camp. Lyra had fallen asleep to that tune that was not really a lullaby many nights during their trip. She found it soothing to her own nerves now, except that Lee Scoresby’s voice did not join Hester’s, and Lee Scoresby continued to writhe under his fever, and he was not soothed.

Lyra wiped Lee Scoresby’s face, and was almost certain she felt the strength of his fever even greater than she had only a moment before. The rag was almost dry. He turned his head towards the rag as it pulled away, and then turned his fevered eyes onto Lyra.

“Lace?” he said, or something like it. Maybe it had been an attempt to say ‘Lyra’ but so slurred as to be incomprehensible. But he was not looking at her like he knew her, like she was his Lyra. He looked confused.

“It’s Lyra, Lee,” said Hester, who had come to a break in her song.

“It’s alright, Mr…Scoresby…Mr. Lee,” Lyra choked out, and she was good at lying but that gift seemed to have left her just then. “I’ll just wet it again.”

“This is not enough,” said Iorek, who had hovered grimly all that time, putting out a paw to steady Lee whenever his writhing seemed likely to have him off his bed and onto the ground. “We will move him into the stream.”

“Is that safe?” asked Lyra.

“Safer than not,” answered Iorek. “I will carry him to the stream now.”

And suiting action to words, the bear gently took Lee Scoresby up in his arms, knowing exactly where the man would most need support so as to not jostle a broken rib or put pressure on his recently healed internal bleed, and looking rather like a father lifting up his child son.

Bears can stand on two legs, though it is not their preference, mostly done to intimidate or to reach higher or see farther. Walking was more precarious in that position but could also be done, if done slowly, and Iorek had little difficulty carrying the man like that the few steps to the stream. The most difficult part was that the camp he had erected had a sort of natural wall of vines and young saplings, and this was best passed through going low, but bears, when they are of a mind to move forward and have built the momentum to do so, will not be stopped by _plants_ , not even ones as strong as these, and the bear waded through them as if they were not there, snapping plants and ripping some up by the roots.

“Pa?” murmured Lee towards Iorek, clearly still utterly out of it because it was hard for any person to look less like his father than the bear did, “You get out of the fire?”

“We are putting the fire out now,” Iorek answered, true in a metaphorical sense anyway, and he carefully squatted down into a sitting position and lowered the man into the swift flowing stream.

It was not as cold as many streams in Lapland were; its source was not snowmelt but a spring under the earth, but it felt like ice to the man being lowered into it, so cold he felt it as _heat_ , and he shrieked as if Iorek were lowering him into a vat of boiling water.

In fact, it is ill advised under most circumstances to try and lower a person’s temperature by instantly transferring the person into a much colder environment, just as it is ill advised to warm up someone who is freezing by using high temperatures to combat the cold. Gradual change is the best method where temperatures are concerned, high or low.

One might suppose Iorek, being an arctic bear, would not be aware of this or that he acted foolishly. In fact, being an arctic bear, and aware of the potential affects of an extreme climate (even bears can get too cold under the right circumstances, and overheating was a real danger when they travelled south) Iorek knew better than many humans would. He also knew, firstly, that the stream was not ice melt and not freezing, but pleasantly cool, and, secondly, that Lee Scoresby was losing the fight against his fever, and doing nothing was not an option.

So he sat in the stream and held the man in the water, careful of his ribs and neck, careful that the man’s face stayed above the water, and he waited. For the fever to go down. For the fever to win. He waited. Lee Scoresby did seem to be doing a bit better, if it was better that he suddenly had enough energy to fight against Iorek’s hold, where before he had only writhed weakly and a baby could have held him down.

“Nn,” he said, doing his best to get out of the water.

“You lie still, Lee, and let the water help,” Hester ordered, not in the stream, because, while shallow by human or bear standards, she would have had to swim and likely been swept along by the current. Instead, she crouched as near as she could get, her paws getting wet at the stream’s edge. She clearly wanted to be closer, moving with agitation.

“Serafina Pekkala said it would not last long,” Lyra said, wading out to join Iorek and Lee Scoresby in the stream. “And he will get better fast…after.”

She did not mention that the witch had also said that would only happen if he survived the burn. That did not need saying. They all already knew it, except perhaps Hester, and Hester was not so stupid as to not understand the danger had yet to pass.

“You should keep yourself dry, Lyra Silvertongue,” Iorek said. “Lee Scoresby will not be happy if he regains his health and discovers you have caught a cold.”

“I won’t catch a cold,” Lyra answered, sounding stubborn and defiant, because this was something she could fight. She rather hoped Iorek would continue the argument, but the bear did not.

“Hester?” Lee Scoresby called next, words still slurred but clearly her name.

“I’m here, Lee,” the hare called. “You just…just keep fighting.”

“We fighting?” asked Lee, and he did not seem to know at all what was going on. “Where’s my Winchester? Hester?” His hands reached for something, one splashing in the water, the other flailing against Iorek. He felt warm, soft fur, and he looked confused, then he said again, “Hester?”

“I’m here, Lee,” Hester said again, splashing her small paws against the water in frustration, and it was clear that at any moment, current or no current, she was going to go after him.

“Here,” said Pan, making himself into a large turtle with a broad shell, “Get on my back.”

Either Hester’s recent aversion to touch did not extend to another daemon, or she was desperate enough to overcome it, because Hester leapt on at once and Pan paddled out towards the others. Lyra had to help him because the current was fast there, she could feel it sucking at her, and the animal Pan had chosen couldn’t touch without submerging and dunking the hare.

Lee was still flailing, but weakly, which was just as well, or when his hand finally met Hester he might have pushed her right off Pan’s back and into the water. The touch was too weak for that, though, and a moment later Lee had a handful of her fur, careful and gentle, or perhaps too weak to hold her any tighter, and he calmed.

“Mr. Lee?” asked Lyra, and she put her hand to his forehead, and his fever was still there, and she dripped water over his face where he could not be submerged.

It was difficult to judge time under such circumstances, but it felt like they sat in the water for an hour. Had they a watch, they might have seen it was about ten minutes, but what do watches know about time? Time is fluid and malleable, and in a moment of crisis, minutes stretch into hours. And all the while Lee Scoresby’s flailing grew weaker, and his moans and words more incomprehensible until there were only weak moans, and then the man was silent, and all the while his fever burned hot even with the cool stream water rushing over him.

His hand never left Hester, not even when he seemed to slip into sleep. Lyra helped Pan stay in one spot with the hare on his back, and Iorek held the man, and they waited as Lee Scoresby seemed to fade further and further away no matter how tight they held him, until it seemed impossible he could survive. Lyra found herself keeping her eyes on Hester instead of Mr. Lee, fearing if she took her eyes off for a moment the hare would blow out like smoke.

And then, quite suddenly, the fever broke.

Iorek realized first, because he had felt the fever beneath his paws, and he knew fires intimately but somehow he sensed this fire that could not literally burn him as forgefire. So he knew when the burn almost seemed to melt away, like the dying of an ember.

It rather alarmed him, in all honesty; he had gotten so used to the heat that the lack of it brought to mind a corpse. But Lee Scoresby still breathed, and Hester still rode on Pan’s back, and the body did not chill to the temperature of the stream but maintained a steady warm pulse. A heart was still beating inside that chest.

“Lee?” said Hester, the second to note the change. She had felt Lee Scoresby weakening, and her own heart had beat heavy in her chest as she waited to see if she was about to vanish, and she was determined to fight it if she felt it happening, but she could not imagine what it would feel like. And now she felt a new strength flowing back into her. That was not death. That was not being severed from her Lee. That was ongoing life.

“What is it?” asked Lyra, who only knew that Lee Scoresby lay as still and calm as death, except where his hand still clutched Hester.

“His fever has broken,” Iorek answered. The girl stared at him, uncomprehending, and then, when the news finally allowed itself to be understood, her eyes grew wide.

“You mean…” she said, hope in her voice, but unable to finish at first, in case she had misunderstood. Hope can sometimes be felt as pain, and those who have the strength to face fear need twice that strength to face hope. Strength Lyra had in spades, however, and she did ask. “You mean…he’s going to get better?”

“I believe he will,” answered Iorek. And he started to stand up to carry Lee Scoresby from the stream and back into the camp. Before he could quite stand, Hester surprised everyone by leaping from Pan’s back, aiming for Iorek’s arm rather than Lee (because the hare knew well landing there could hurt Lee). The bear froze, so surprised he sat back down again and nearly had all of them in the water (his balance was precarious in that position) but he did manage to catch himself by digging his hind claws into the stream’s bed, and that anchored him enough to not fall back.

“Sorry,” said Hester, not sounding sorry at all, and Iorek stared at the little hare, who had so recently shied away from the suggestion of his touch, now pulling herself up him to ride on his shoulder.

Then Iorek stood again, and Lyra helped Pan to the shore where he became a dog for the sole pleasure of being able to shake water droplets from his coat. Lyra shrieked when he did this, too happy not to, and laughed and gave out a whoop of pure joy.

Back in the camp (after tearing through more plants) Iorek had Lyra move the sealskin he had wanted to lay Lee Scoresby on before to a location further from his old sickbed and in the sunlight, and he lay his friend down on it. The man was wet through, of course, and the first thing to do was dry him. It would do good to have a third bed to lie him on once he was dried, but thanks to the destructive vandalism to their first camp, there were not many options.

It was also a good idea to change his bandages, and apply new bloodmoss, but those supplies were also just about gone. It would also do them all good to have a nourishing meal, something hot (Iorek would have preferred something newly killed and still warm, but fire roasted would have done). Had Iorek been alone with his friends, he would have felt hard pressed to achieve everything that needed doing. He was not alone.

“I see Lee Scoresby won his fight,” said Anna Koskinen, respectfully standing at the entrance to their camp (the side still mostly fortified, not having been trampled through by a bear. “My sisters have been to your old camp to salvage what we could, what you left behind. We have set to boiling some clothes that were ruined and they may work as bandages. We also have supper cooking.”

Between the afternoon sunlight, a good fire, and some good friends, they all were dried and comfortable in no time, or, in the case of Hester and Lee Scoresby, as comfortable as they could be. Lee Scoresby slept all through the changing of his bandages, a true healing sleep this time, not even wincing as fresh bloodmoss was packed into his wounds (the witches were able to supply some). His wounds still looked painful and grotesque and dangerous, but there was no sign of infection in them, and now the bloodmoss would be able to do its job in keeping new infection at bay, and Iorek seemed quite certain the man would heal.

Lyra worried, as she ate her venison, that Mr. Lee was sleeping through supper. She said nothing, but her continuous glances in his direction made it obvious.

“Do not worry, child,” said Serafina Pekkala, “I have a broth prepared for him, when he is ready, nourishing and good. It is good for him to sleep as long as he can. He will be weak a while yet, but he improves. Already, I feel his strength returning.”

“Do you have enough to eat?” Lyra asked Iorek next, knowing how much the bear could eat, and the tiny bit of meat offered him did not look like enough.

“I ate an entire elk earlier,” came his answer. “I will be good for a while yet.”

“Our elk?” Lyra asked, perhaps with some dismay; she had been looking forward to showing it off to Lee Scoresby. Of course, she realized it would not be much good by then, laying dead and untreated for two days (and had so little time passed? It seemed incomprehensible).

Lyra turned her head again to look towards Lee Scoresby, not worried about him eating anymore, just glad to be able to do it.

“Your father will be well now, child,” said the closest witch, Anna Koskinen.

“I wish he was my father,” said Lyra, “Any girl should be proud of such a father. But…he en’t…not really.” She felt she had to explain, because to do otherwise would be a sort of betrayal to the man she had known as her uncle for most of her life. Even if denying Mr. Lee also felt like a betrayal. She felt rather miserable with it all. How much easier things would have been if her mother had never told her, if she still thought herself an orphan.

“Isn’t he?” asked the witch, eyes alight with curiosity. She studied Lyra closely, close enough to make the child feel uncomfortable. “Then who is your father, Lyra Silvertongue?”

For a moment, Lyra wondered if she should say, but if she couldn’t trust the people who had just saved Lee Scoresby’s life, then who could she trust? So she said, “Lord Asriel.”

“Lord Asriel?” said the witch, with a sort of purr, as if tasting something divine or remembering something lovely. Then she studied Lyra more closely than ever. “Yes, I see his features in you now, as plain as anything. I never knew he had a daughter. Oh, things make much more sense now.”

Lyra found herself blushing, both under the studied gaze and the embarrassing fact that her own father had kept her a secret. Instead of explaining, and not entirely sure she actually _liked_ Anna Koskinen, she said, “He does,” and almost left it at that, but her own curiosity had been piqued by those last words. “What makes sense, now?”

“Your father is a most interesting man,” said the witch, that same look of remembered pleasure radiating through the woman’s entire body. “I knew him…for a time.” How intimately she knew him, she did not feel necessary to share with his daughter, and Lyra was still young enough to not guess. “He was most fascinated in me, as well, of course. He is doing very interesting research into the nature of the universe; he is quite brilliant…for a man. And of course your church does not approve what he seeks to learn because they think they already know all, and he…appreciated an outside perspective.”

Lyra listened to this with interest, but also waiting to hear what the witch had found surprising, and the witch, though clearly distracted in the pleasure of her memories, did eventually explain.

“He was fascinated in how witches can…oh…how to put it so a child can understand…”

That was insulting, but Lyra still waited, because she wanted to know, and soon the witch went on.

“We can listen to the whispers beyond the world,” said the witch, and perhaps it was not simplified enough, because Lyra did not understand at all, but the witch did not wait to see if she did, but continued with her story, and that was the important part anyway. “He wanted to know if it worked like an alethiometer, that is, a truth teller, and he was always asking questions for me to find the answers to. And one day he wanted to know…he said a woman had contacted him,” (here she made a face, displeased, before clearing her expression to share the rest), “And she was sending him something…something he thought better off somewhere else, and he asked if he shouldn’t just…send it right back. I suppose he meant you, child, but I did not know that then.”

Lyra swallowed, and said nothing, and Pan crept beneath her fingers, a hare again, almost like he wanted to say ‘you en’t unwanted’ without words.

“I listened to the…well…to the whispers beyond the world…and the answer made little sense to me but I shared it anyway. I suppose it is not a secret; it went like this: If it stays with the woman then it will be happy…but unsafe, horribly unsafe. If you go and bring it for yourself…if Lord Asriel does I mean, if he fetches it for himself, it will be horribly, hideously unhappy…but safe. But if it is allowed the journey in-between, unmolested by either, then it will find its own home where it will be both happy and safe…but it will be lost to you, Lord Asriel that is, for all time.”

“And what…” said Lyra, swallowing hard and trying not to show how very much she cared, “What did Lord Asriel do then?”

“He frowned a lot and was most uncourteous to my attentions,” answered the witch with a bit of a pout. “He wanted to know more, but he never would tell me that it was his own daughter this was about or I might have been able to give more. He fretted so much, I grew quite bored of him and I left and came home. That was…oh…nearly a month ago now. If you are going to him, I will be happy to escort you; perhaps he will be interesting again once you are settled.”

Lyra did not give an answer to that, because she felt it might be dangerous to tell a witch she did not want her for a companion, and she went and sat by Lee Scoresby’s side.

“Aren’t things clearer now?” asked Pan in her lap, in a whisper, not wanting to disturb the sleeping man. “We will only be safe and happy if we stay with Mr. Lee.”

“But that’s just it,” Lyra whispered back. “We are still going to Lord Asriel. Mr. Lee is too…too honorable to steal us. And now we know we are going to be unhappy.”

“Maybe Lord Asriel will let us go…knowing that is better for us. Mrs. Coulter did.”

“Maybe…or…or…maybe.” And no longer looking miserable, Lyra sat and thought.


	12. Chapter 12

Marisa Coulter never wanted to be a mother. That was the lie she told herself. 

As a child, she had dolls, like most girls did. And like with many girls (certainly more than most acknowledged), most of those dolls came to a sad end: scalped, or arms lost, or little painted faces smashed in. For some children, this happens by accident, through the child loving the doll to pieces. And sometimes, as with Marisa, this was a calculated enjoyment of her own power to destroy. It did not help that she quickly learned to turn on the tears, show her pathetically ruined doll, then adding in a dash of accusation to cast blame on another child, and then she would shortly receive a new doll along with vengeance. It would be a mistake to assume she did not love her dolls, but they ended broken all the same.

And now she was not a child, but she had a child, one she was meant to love and adore with all her heart. The child ruined her carefully crafted marriage. If it could only have been her husband’s, all would still have been well. (She did not truly want it to be her husband’s; her husband was malleable and weak. He could not even avenge his own manhood properly). If it could only have looked like it _could_ be her husband’s. But the girl, like most babies, resembled its father in every aspect, nature’s misguided attempt to keep the father from killing it; how that backfired. 

Marisa Coulter, if asked, would say either that she adored her child, or that she had never wanted her, depending on who asked and why. Both were lies. Marisa Coulter wanted to be a mother from the start, but never for the child, always for herself.

She loved her child with a greedy _need_. She loved her as she loved her own self. And she hated her as she hated her own self. The golden monkey at her side looked on the tiny baby and showed not an ounce of tenderness towards it. He was jealous, Marisa supposed. (Not supposed, _knew_.) She could feel his agitation like an itch under the skin, always and ever, worse when he saw anything she loved. He did not think she had enough love for both him and anyone, or anything, else. Perhaps he was right. He did not touch the baby, though, did not even make a swipe at her little daemon.

Marisa did not cry when the baby was taken away. Her daemon did not exult either, as one might expect, but gave a steely, off-putting glare. He did not want the baby, but the baby was _theirs_. She did cry when she told her husband how the baby had died, the perfect appearance of a sorrowful young mother facing enormous tragedy. Her monkey still glared, but that was accepted as an expression of grief.

Until it wasn’t.

And her life was in ruins, and it was the child’s fault, and she did not know how she felt. Perhaps she did not hold enough love in her heart for anything beyond herself, but the girl was a part of her.

When she finally came for her daughter (when Lord Asriel was far away, on one of his explorations, too far away to have a care what happened with his daughter, when she had gained enough power within the church to be viewed as sympathetic rather than sinful) she surprised herself by _wanting_ her.

She dressed her up like a little doll, and showed her London, and showed London her, and for a time she could pretend that she truly was a mother and that she felt the joy and pride and love that a mother feels.

Lyra was not her mother, though, and she did not act like a doll; she allowed the dresses only with reluctance and she did not obediently go silent and still when Marisa tired of playing with her but kept being a person _all the time_ , and Marisa sometimes just looked at her and remembered the tiny baby, and wondered if having her baby taken so soon, so young, had broken some bond between them because sometimes Marisa looked at this ridiculous _child_ and could not see herself in her at all and could not see her father either and she tried to find the place in her heart where her love lived and just found herself. Would it have been different if she had had Lyra from babyhood? Or would she only have broken her doll all the sooner?

Marisa Coulter gave Lyra many trinkets, but never any dolls. Not even when the child once noticed a lovely little porcelain figure and admired it. Most anything else the child noticed or took a fancy to was hers on the spot, but not the doll.

“I suppose you want that, now,” said Marisa, with clear disdain. The child, who adored her new guardian and took all her opinions to be her own, tilted her head, then said, “No, of course not. I am not a baby. I only thought it pretty…to look at.”

Marisa saw herself clearest in the child when Lyra lied. That was when she also felt the strongest sense of pride. It was also when her daemon hated the child the most and bared his teeth and glared until the girl’s daemon would either change into something that allowed him to huddle in the child’s hands…or into something fierce and protective.

They listened to the child speak so fondly with Pan (the daemon had a pet name, _that’s_ how fond she was) and Marisa wanted to _break_ them, to make them more like her and her own daemon, greedy and resentful and sly. The girl lied, to save herself and to entertain, for attention, but not for the best reason to lie: ambition.

Surely the girl had ambitions, but they were so…common. Her closest friend, the one she begged to be allowed to bring with her to London, was a kitchen boy. Of course, Marisa had had to create an excuse more palatable than ‘I don’t want you to be friends with a kitchen boy’. ‘He would miss his home’ was acknowledged but disagreed with. ‘He will be jealous and resentful’ was also acknowledged but even more swiftly called false. Marisa finally had to create a crisis that called the boy away, and then told the girl he had been asked and ‘if he wants to come, he has only to join us by the time the zeppelin lifts off’. There was not time for Lyra to find him and ask him herself, and she was young and trusting enough still to accept, at take-off, that her friend had not wanted her. She did not hide her tears. She never sought out comfort, but neither did she ever hide her tears.

Marisa rather thought she should feel bad when she made her own child cry. At best, though, she could console herself with the fact that she did not _enjoy_ it. It is not like she hurt the girl anyway. She never beat her, never locked her in the dark, never denied her food or toiletries or…or any of the myriad of possibilities that had crossed her mind when the need came to discipline the child.

Perhaps sometimes she grabbed too rough. Perhaps sometimes she did not hold her daemon back when it went for Pan. Perhaps she failed at laying out boundaries, instead keeping her expectations shifting, laughing when she should scold, or scolding when she wants to laugh. Or some mixture of the two; her moods changing and unpredictable, laughter turning into a snarl, rage disintegrating into laughter.

Then came the day Lyra received a letter from Roger. The day she met Lee Scoresby. The day she almost died.

In fact, Roger sent two letters. The first was through the regular post, in another’s hand because, as the boy explained in his ill-thought out and meandering correspondence, he did not feel up to the task of writing, but got a friend to help. That ridiculous attempt was given with due diligence to the fire, Lyra none the wiser. The second letter proved both children had been slyer than she knew, brought by the gyptians, and this letter found its intended recipient without maternal censor.

That was the first time the girl looked at the woman with something that was neither admiration, nor respect, nor anxiety, nor love. The look Lyra gave her was like looking in a mirror; it was the first time Marisa truly saw herself in her child.

“I was protecting you, Lyra. Yes, even from your friend. It is what a mother does for her daughter.”

“You are not my mother!”

Marisa Coulter did not explain, never said whether she spoke figuratively (I see you like a daughter), or literally (you are my daughter). She did not need to; Lyra looked at her mother’s face and saw herself.

It was, perhaps, not the best way for an orphan to discover she did have a mother.

Lyra ran, blindly, no forethought, no calculation, her only thought to get away from that woman. She ran into the street, heard shouts, squeals, saw the ambaric car too late, too close, felt the hard impact, heard Marisa Coulter scream her name in horror. All the wind was knocked out of her, and it took her long moments to understand what had happened…and what had not, that she was not knocked over by the car but by a body, a body that had rolled as it hit, taking the blunt of the blow from the asphalt. The person beneath her felt large, solid, warm. She was held so tightly she could feel the person’s heart beating, furiously fast.

“You alright?” asked a voice, female, and for a moment Lyra remembered Mrs. Coulter…no, her _mother_ screaming her name. But that was not her mother’s voice, and she turned her head and saw a rabbit, or what she supposed to be a rabbit, but a large, rough looking one, so close they were practically touching as it peered at her, fore paws resting on the arm that was still holding tightly to the girl. Lyra rather stared, both still shocked from the near accident and somewhat surprised for a daemon to talk to her with such concern, because it was her the daemon was looking at.

“Don’t worry ‘bout me,” said the person holding her, a man’s voice, “M’fine.”

“I wasn’t asking about you, Lee,” said the rabbit. “I know you’ll live.”

“Are you alright, Lyra?” Pan asked, flitting nervously as a bird, and finally landing, to both man and girl’s surprise, on the rabbit’s head. “I should have…”

“I’m fine,” Lyra said, finally finding her voice, not about to let Pan take the blame for anything, and she moved to sit up, only to be stopped by how tightly the man still held her. “Er…mister?”

“Scoresby…Lee Scoresby,” said the man, not catching on to what she was really asking until she pulled again. Then, “Oh…” and he let her go. Then Marisa Coulter was there, pulling Lyra up off the man.

The end result was that Lyra did not run away that day. 

Marisa Coulter at first had every appearance of a terrified mother; she smiled at the man who saved Lyra and gave him her address and told him to stop by for ‘compensation’.

“Happy to oblige for such lovely ladies,” answered Lee, which Lyra wrinkled her nose to.

“You want money for saving me?” she asked, clear scorn in her voice, because she knew stories well enough to know the gallant hero was supposed to refuse. She may also have been embarrassed to have been saved, which made her less than courteous to her savior, even if Pan did seem cozy with the man’s daemon and was now giving her a disapproving look.

“Aren’t you worth money?” Mr. Scoresby asked right back, amused rather than insulted, and that had confused Lyra enough to ask no more questions. “Anyway,” continued Mr. Scoresby, “Any chance to see such lovely ladies again would be worth it.”

Marisa Coulter smiled as though charmed, then took Lyra home. Behind closed doors, the concern melted away into pure, raw fury.

“You will never run from me again,” she ordered, twisting the girl’s arm until she cried out, but then Lyra looked back with defiance, her own fury ignited.

“I will always run, because you are not my mother!” she screamed, twisting herself free and falling to the floor. And then she screamed again because the golden monkey, features twisted into a grotesque mask of hatred, had Pan. Pan shrieked in panic, too frightened (to _hurt_ ) to think, let alone to change into something that would allow for escape.

And for a long moment, Marisa stared at her crying child, and at her own daemon torturing Lyra and Pan both, and she could not find the horror that should be there. She knew it existed, she had certainly felt _something_ when she saw Lyra almost knocked down in the street, something fierce with teeth that struck at her heart. But she felt nothing but satisfaction now, seeing her own child put securely in her place.

Her daemon could have ripped Pan limb from limb in that moment and she would have just watched as the daemon and child were _destroyed_ , and she would have felt nothing. After, perhaps, perhaps it would have destroyed her too, but in the moment…nothing.

The monkey stopped on his own though; perhaps it was love, in a way, enough to stay his hand. Perhaps it was simply self preservation, understanding better than Marisa herself how she should have responded. And after he let Pan go, after they had stood together for a full five minutes simply looking down at the sobbing child as she cuddled her daemon to her, Marisa Coulter came to a realization.

“I am not good for you…am I.”

This was not an epiphany, but a simple recognition, like looking in a mirror and acknowledging a gray hair or a wart. Unexpectedly, the child turned her teary eyes up to meet hers, and instead of vitriol or hatred, they seemed to be asking for something, _begging_.

“Please,” said the child. “You are my _mother_.”

Marisa Coulter did not know what the child was asking for. All she knew was that it was not in her power to give it.

“I will break you…one day,” she said, just as dispassionately as her first statement, a spoken moment of fact rather than a threat or a fear. The girl continued to plead with her eyes. Marisa Coulter considered what to do. The simplest would be to send her back to Jordan College. Back to her rough and tumble existence. Back to her kitchen boy. No, there were better places. “Perhaps I should send you to your father.”

“My what?” asked a small voice in return.

When Lee Scoresby did call on them, having taken the time to clean himself up, he did not receive the reward he expected (nor the one he feared; it was awkward to explain to beautiful women that what he wanted from them, and what they _thought_ he wanted from them, did not exactly line up). What he got at first was a lovely meal and fine conversation.

“What do you do, Mr. Scoresby? An aeronaut? How thrilling!”

Then, less innocently, “You ever take passengers?” and “Is it safe?”

Then, finally, “Mr. Scoresby, I know I do not know you well, but I feel I can trust you. You saved my daughter, and she means everything to me, I absolutely _adore_ her. I have a job for you, and very important one, if you are willing. I will pay you quite handsomely too.”

“A fine lady,” Lee said, later, to Hester, still on a high from his evening spent with the captivating woman and her interesting daughter. The woman was beautiful, and Lee always had a soft spot for beauty, and the girl’s eyes were bright with interest and admiration when he talked about his journeys up north, and that is always agreeable to have directed towards oneself. He had always liked children and always rather wished he could have some, but he had never had the opportunity.

“If you say so, Lee,” answered Hester, heavy doubt in her tone. She was never blinded nearly so completely as Lee when it came to beautiful women. “Her daemon is something else.” It was not said as a compliment.

“Well, you got cozy with the girl’s daemon, anyway,” Lee pointed out. To that Hester said nothing, but Lee wasn’t expecting her to. There were some things all daemons had in common, to do with how they interacted with each other, like they were born with secrets from their human counterparts. Lee never knew what caused Hester to take to some daemons or to be repulsed by others, but she was generally a good judge of character.

“How much time to we have, before she wants us to set out?” Hester asked instead, an important question considering their own business in London.

“That’s what happens when you’re busy playing with other daemons; you miss important information,” Lee answered.

“Makes a change from all the times you’re busy making a fool of yourself and I’m the one to keep my ears open,” Hester answered easily, then waited patiently for Lee to stop pretending to be indignant and answer her question.

“A month. Plenty of time to make our inquiries. A shame we had to come all the way to _London_ for it; you would think news of an arctic bear would come from…well…the arctic. Anyway, Mrs. Coulter wanted to make her own inquiries into something, and she thought it might take a month.”

“Into us, probably. She’ll want to be sure of our character. I suppose it was a good gig while it lasted.”

“You think she’ll back out?” asked Lee.

“I think if she hears half of what you’ve gotten up to over the years, she’d be a fool not to. It’s her _daughter_. Best start to think what we’ll do if she does back out, because I don’t know we have the funds to get us back north again on our own.”

“It’ll be fine,” Lee answered. “Worst comes to worst, we set up with a carnival or the like and give rides to rich tourists.”

“That didn’t go so well last time,” Hester pointed out.

“Well…this time we know better what not to do.”

Marisa Coulter was not making inquiries into the Texan aeronaut, or not in the way Lee and Hester thought she would. She was using her money, favors, and connections to ask one very complicated, but very important question from a source that always tells the truth. It was, more or less, exactly the same question Lord Asriel would later ask of a witch. And she received almost exactly the same answer.

“She is mine,” Marisa said to her daemon, after hearing the answer from a slightly confused theologian (like Lord Asriel, she did not think it prudent to explain the question was about her own daughter). “Why should I give her up. I could make myself safe. For her.”

Her daemon said nothing. Did not even give her an accusing stare. He did not even seem to listen. She sighed.

“Why did you never want me?” asked Lyra, as her things were packed away. She did not sound accusing either. She just sounded tired.

“You are going to someone who wants you,” answered her mother. “You are going home.”

The girl did not say, ‘I am home’. She was a liar, but she did not lie to be cruel, and those words never crossed her lips.

“Goodbye, Mrs. Coulter,” she said when it was time to leave. Then, because perhaps Mrs. Coulter had taught her some things, “Thank you for having me. I had a lovely time.”

And perhaps, for the first and last time in her life, Marisa Coulter acted as a mother and put her child before herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was meant to be a short passage explaining how Lyra and Lee met, and why her mother sent Lyra with Lee in the first place, before I continued on in the ‘present’, but Marisa Coulter rather took over. Oh well. Stories go where they need to go, I guess.


	13. Chapter 13

Lee Scoresby dreamed of flying. It was, by far, the most pleasant dream he would have for some time. He vaguely remembered tumultuous dreams before that, prairie fire and smoke and people he loved falling away into thick black shadows while the flames _raged_. Then, in the midst of the inferno, a small hare appeared. One might think the man would mistake it for Hester; they looked very similar, but Lee _knew_ Hester as he knew himself and instantly saw the hare as simply that, an unknown hare.

“Follow me,” said the hare, just as though she were his daemon, and she ran through the thickest of the flames. As is the way in dreams, Lee simply knew he must follow, and he did. The fire burned in ways that a dream fire should not, but there was no going back. And beyond the fire was cool air, and he flew, until the fire was a distant memory. He never saw the hare. He vaguely hoped it had made it through, then heard it laughing ahead of him and thought it must have, that it must have flown away before he got through the flame himself. He felt glad.

He dreamed of flying and then he woke up and reality was not a pleasant waking. If he could have leapt back into his dream he would have, but he felt he had slept himself out and there was too much energy in him now to slip back into dreams.

His fever may have burnt away, but it left behind pain. The constant shivering his fever had induced left his muscles burning with a deep soreness…and this on top of the soreness that comes from being made to walk with one’s arms bound and then being very thoroughly beaten from head to foot over the entire course of his captivity.

The river had helped reduce the swelling, and the bloodmoss had encouraged healing as well as having some properties to dull pain. Ironically, the worst of his open wounds hurt less than the places where his skin hadn’t split but only bruised. This was not to say they did not hurt, throbbing with a deep, dull sort of pain that was horrible but bearable. The bruises and the sore muscles were bearable too, particularly if he did not move. It was how they all piled on top of each other that turned bearable into unbearable.

Quite naturally, awakening into such an unpleasant place as his body had become, Lee would gladly have fallen back into sleep. Failing that, he would have liked to moan and groan and not move a single aching muscle.

“You’re awake!” said a young voice which quite took away his ability to voice his pain. He would rather have bitten his own tongue off than voice it to her. He knew this instinctively, even before he his memories sorted themselves into anything that would allow him to know who she was or why it mattered that she not listen to him groaning. In part it was from not wanting to upset her, but part was simply pride. So he did not let out the groan that wanted to escape, instead turning his blinking eyes towards the speaker.

“Lyra?” he said, surprising himself with how weak and rough his voice sounded. His eyes felt gritty and teary at the same time, and they did not want to focus, but he got them to in the end, because his last clear memory of Lyra was _danger_ , and he needed to see her.

“We’re all fine, Lee,” said Hester, huddled at his side. His arm was wrapped around her without him even noticing, hand gently caressing an ear. Considering how Hester never really cared for her ears being petted, it said a lot that she was allowing it.

His eyes focused at last and he was relieved to see the girl looked much like she sounded; visible skin unmarred, daemon full of energy as he clambered over the girl as a squirrel. Lyra’s hair was a tangled mess, and her skirt had been torn and resewn at some point (the tear the work of the vandal to the camp, the sewing courtesy of Iorek who was surprisingly gifted in that regard, when she needed to change from her wet clothes and the tear was discovered.) Despite her clothes and hair, she looked hale and healthy and full of energy as she hovered over him.

Satisfied, he looked around past her, his memories still a bit of a jumble but knowing there was at least one more member of their party unaccounted for. And there he was; wearing his helmet but the rest of his armor disassembled, no obvious wounds. Beside Iorek was a less expected figure.

“Serafina Pekkala?” Lee said next, utterly confused and wondering if he still dreamed.

“You do not remember my arrival?” the witch said, then, “I am not surprised. You were very ill. I bring you warm broth; it will make you strong.

“What kind of broth?” asked Lee, who was not feeling particularly hungry and would much rather have been given a glass of cold water to soothe his throat, rather than a bowl of something thick and hot to fill his stomach.

“A nourishing one,” the witch answered, and Lee stared at her suspiciously.

“Just drink the damn broth, Lee,” said Hester, her own voice strained, and then, as Lee felt the first curls of guilt in his stomach, because of course Hester had to share his aches and pains, she said, “And don’t be stupid.” The last was not explained, but they had had that sort of conversation often enough for him to follow. She accepted his pain as a gift and wished she could take _more_ from him and he was not to complain or wish things otherwise. Lee left off feeling that guilt as he managed to turn his head enough to see her and discover a whole new guilt.

“You’re hurt,” said Lee, taking in the bandages wrapped skillfully so as to cover the nape of her neck without strangling her.

“Most healed already,” Hester answered. Lee wanted to hold her properly, suddenly desperate for closeness. He could hardly explain it himself, except he felt her need as his own, and she felt raw and exposed and longed to curly up so deep into his skin that she could only feel him. She needed him, and he was just lying there, being sick and weak and hurt.

“Hester,” he said, his voice raw for a whole new reason, and in this he did not care who saw him being weak, because when it came to Hester he had no pride. Hester huddled as close as she could, still not willing to crawl up over him, not just to fulfil her own needs, not if it would hurt him. He wanted her to hurt him, if that was what it took, but doing it would hurt her too.

“She is not badly injured,” Iorek’s deep voice said, knowing how Lee cared.

“Just…just drink the damn broth, Lee,” said Hester, and if Lee hadn’t been able to feel her, trembling and raw, he might have been fooled into thinking she really was fine. She was not fine, and he was not fine, and things were not fine. But they would be.

Lee drank the broth.

Iorek had to help him sit up, because his muscles felt stiff and wrung out, and between the pain of moving and the weakness he could not easily lift himself up.

“Let me,” said Iorek, when Lee tried anyway, biting the inside of his cheeks to hold back his groans. “You will tear open your wounds again, after all the trouble I went to binding them up.”

“He had to patch you up with his own armor,” Lyra said, sounding awed and proud and eager to share. “He stuck a tiny bit of it inside you like a bandage to stop you bleeding inside.” 

She had rather unfortunate timing with her revelation, as Lee was just trying to take his first sip of the broth, Serafina Pekkala carefully helping him to hold the bowl, and he breathed in at exactly the wrong moment and broke down into a coughing fit. A very painful coughing fit. Coughing uses muscles he would rather not have used. He was lucky in that Iorek thought better of helping him with a pat to his back.

“What was that?” Lee asked, once he had the breath to and the pain had receded enough to allow for noises that weren’t pained groans or curse words, neither of which he felt comfortable voicing in the moment. Iorek stayed at his back, solid and warm, and did not answer. He could not see the bear there, so Lee turned his questioning eyes towards Serafina Pekkala, who simply returned his look with a piercing gaze of her own, and then towards the child and Pan.

Instead of explaining further, Lyra, still sounding impressed and respectful, said “You bled a lot. It’s still splashed out on the ground over there. I never seen so much blood pour out of a person…a person who is still living, I mean. That man whose head was broken up bled a lot too.”

Lee closed his eyes at that, wincing for reasons entirely unrelated to pain, and said, “Lyra…sweetheart…” before trailing off, not quite knowing what there was to say. Sorry? Try to forget you saw that? He was doing a wonderful job as her protector.

“Mr. Lee,” said Lyra, and Lee’s lips twitched upward in a pleased smile in spite of everything, “Mr. Lee…I wanted to say…I wanted to say thank you. And…and I’m sorry.”

“What do you have to be sorry for?” Lee asked, also wanting to know what she was thankful for, but the second statement was so confounding that it was the one he asked after.

“I didn’t lie good enough,” she answered. “They kept hurting you.”

“Nonsense.” That was Serafina Pekkala, answering before Lee could. “I could read those men’s hearts, even dead, and there was not a thing you could have done to make them stop.”

“You can read a dead man’s heart?” asked Lyra, distracted, now turning her awe towards the witch. Lee couldn’t quite decide whether to be relieved or jealous.

“Nothing easier,” answered Serafina Pekkala. “Men like act all tough while all the while their hearts melt into the stones like soft goo. Those men were not going to be stopped by anything short of a bullet or an armored bear’s vengeance. There are times when words can be a shield and times when they need to be a weapon. This time was a weapon time, and you did admirably. Drink your broth, Lee Scoresby.”

Lee was more successful in drinking down the broth the second try, as Lyra kept at the witch with her questions and did not feel the need to make any new revelations. He could not quite place the taste of what was in the broth, but the broth was warm and tasted wholesome and brought to his mind his mother’s chicken soup.

After the broth was more medicinal tea, the bitterness supposedly balanced by honey but really just teaching Lee’s tongue to hate honey, and then cool clear water to wash that flavor away. Lee allowed it because it was near impossible to do anything else with Lyra looking down at him, her large, worried eyes lighting up when he allowed the others to do whatever they thought necessary to encourage his health.

“We should bottle that look,” Hester murmured, not to Lee, to everyone really; “Bring it out whenever we need Lee to behave.”

“A useful ointment,” Iorek agreed, and he sounded solemn but Lee knew him well enough to hear the laughter in his voice.

“What do you mean?” asked Lyra, who had no idea her own potency.

“Tell me again about Iorek putting his armor inside me,” Lee said quickly, before it could be explained to her. Besides, he really wanted to know what that was about.

“Oh, Mr. Lee, it was just when Serafina Pekkala came, only we didn’t know she’d came, she just appeared with magic…”

Lyra’s retelling involved probably more dramatics than what they had actually lived; to hear her tell it he went white as a wraith from the bleed inside him and Iorek stabbed him to the hilt with a dagger like he was some kind of sacrifice on an altar (the blade had gone exactly as deep as it had needed to, which was most certainly not to the hilt), and Lee was almost certainly right on the point of dying before Iorek saved him.

“And he put a piece of his very own armor inside you, like…like sharing his soul with you,” Lyra said.

“It was the only metal at hand with the right properties,” Iorek said, the first time he felt the need to offer any corrections to her rather embellished tale.

Lee, by that point, had actually gotten a bit caught up in the story, and had almost forgotten that Lyra was retelling real events that had happened to him. It did not feel exactly real, but if he moved his hand beneath his blanket he could feel the bandage, feel the throb beneath the bandage of the wound, confirming that at least some of what she described had really happened.

“What were you doing in all of this, Hester?” he asked, in lieu of what he really wanted to ask, which was whether he _really_ still had a piece of Iorek’s sky-iron armor _inside_ him.

“Sleeping,” answered Hester. “Same as you. The witches said they would keep you from moving.”

“Huh,” said Lee, rather glad upon reflection because he imagined being cut into and having (to hear Lyra tell it, and here she wasn’t far off) white hot metal stuck inside him likely hurt quite a bit (hurt still, except the bloodmoss dulled it), and he would hate for Hester to have felt that while he got to sleep through it.

“Anyway,” said Lyra, “Iorek made it into a sort of bandage where you were bleeding and then he tilted you over and a lot of blood poured out, like…like a faucet of blood. But the armor stayed in, and Iorek said that was a good thing because it meant it held and you weren’t going to bleed to death. You were awfully pale though…except around your eye…”

And the child trailed off, no longer enthused in her telling but looking rather pale herself. Lee did not feel much better; having come to remember that it was him the story was about, it was not particularly pleasant to imagine himself bleeding out. He really did not like to imagine Lyra watching that happen.

“Well, it’s a good thing Iorek is such a fine nursemaid, then, en’t it?” Lee said with forced cheerfulness, doing his best to seem hearty and hale, never mind that he still needed Iorek to hold him up, never mind the hand still clinging to Hester, shaking in sympathy with Hester’s trembling. “I guess I’ll have no choice but to be right as rain.”

“You better be…be right as rain,” answered Lyra, suddenly sounding fierce, as if she could _order_ him healthy.

“And so he will be,” said Serafina Pekkala, and from her it sounded like a prophesy as much as an order.

Then Iorek helped Lee to lie back down (on his side, because even dulled by the bloodmoss lying on his back would have been an agony), and Lee took the chance to more fully curl around Hester. He found himself blinking then, starting to feel the pull of sleep even though he could not have been awake more than an hour and he had already slept for so long.

“Go back to sleep, Lee,” Hester murmured, her own voice sleepy, on the verge of doing the very thing she had commanded.

“Been sleeping,” Lee answered, feeling sore and tired and not wanting either. Then he must have fallen asleep in spite of himself because it was dark when he next opened his eyes.

Iorek helped Lee take care of some pressing bodily needs, then insisted he drink more of Serafina Pekkala’s broth and yet more tea.

“I’ll float away on all this liquid,” Lee said, quietly, because Lyra was sleeping. She lay as still as death, wrapped up warm quite close by. She had gotten in the habit of curling up against Iorek at night, citing his warmth as her reason, and the bear always allowed it.

“Any nightmares yet?” Lee asked, voice as quiet as he could make it, trusting to Iorek’s superior hearing to understand him.

“You became uneasy within minutes of falling asleep,” Iorek answered, and Lee knew the bear well enough to know when he was being teased, in spite of the solemn and serious way Iorek had said it.

Lee made a face and said, “I meant the child and you knew it.” And then, “I don’t remember nightmares.”

“The witch Serafina Pekkala put her hand over your forehead and said, ‘sleep’, and you relaxed.” Then, “She did the same for Lyra Silvertongue before she retired. The child has not stirred.”

“And what about yourself?” asked Lee. “Any nightmares when you sleep?”

“I have none,” answered Iorek.

“Because Serafina Pekkala did her little trick over you, or because you haven’t slept.”

“Bears do not need as much sleep as humans. I am fine.”

“You have to let your guard down some time,” Lee pointed out. “Better if it’s not due to exhaustion forcing you down.”

“When I let my guard down, as you say, bad things always happen. I must make sure they do not happen again.”

Then Lee did groan, not from pain, but from having to deal with an obstinate bear. “You can sleep without bad things happening,” Lee tried, already knowing that was not going to convince Iorek.

“I let my guard down for my anger, and a bear died under my paws and I was banished. I let my guard down among humans, let myself become _drunk_ , and my armor was stolen and I was indebted and made to labor for men who had no care for me. The last time I let my guard down, I allowed strangers to break into our camp and _steal_ you. I must not let my guard down again.”

“You did not ‘let your guard down’, you went off too far away to be on guard. _I’m_ the one who let my guard down. I drank too much to notice when Hester started pawing at me that she heard something. My Winchester was still wrapped up and put away when…wait…” Here Lee trailed off, as a horrible thought suddenly occurred to him.

“Your gun is fine,” Iorek said, knowing well Lee’s worry, “And so are your instruments. One of the men went through the camp, breaking and slashing at random, but he missed those items.”

“There, you see?” said Lee, feeling a rush of relief. “You take care of me and Hester, and you take care of Lyra and Pan…you gave a piece of your armor for me…now you need to take care of yourself.”

“It was the only metal…” Iorek began to say.

“Yeah, yeah, the only metal that would do. You would have given it to anyone in need.”

“I did not say _that_ ,” answered Iorek, then, “Go back to sleep, Lee Scoresby.”

“Don’t think I won’t find a way to get you to sleep,” Lee murmured back, “And don’t think…” but what he did not want Iorek to think would never be known, because exhaustion lost him the argument and he drifted back into sleep.

It was not an easy sleep, but he was still tired enough that uneasy was the worst of it.

Iorek stood guard all through the night.


	14. Chapter 14

Arctic bears need sleep. Whatever Iorek tried to imply, their bodies were optimized for living in a harsh environment, which did mean the ability to go hard and nonstop when necessary, but it also meant conserving energy whenever they could. Extreme situations aside, Lee was well aware that Iorek usually slept as many hours as Lee each night, perhaps even a couple more, and that the bear favored taking naps throughout the day.

“Sleeping, and resting, are two different things,” Iorek said when Lee tried to point that out.

“Exactly,” Lee answered, as if that proved his point. “You need _real_ sleep.”

“What if we sang you a lullaby and tucked you in real good?” Hester suggested.

This got a growl that would have had most people backing away from the ornery bear. Hester’s self-preservation instincts, however, were on the same level as Lee’s (no matter how she scolded him over the way he threw himself into danger, she was just as bad) and anyway, she trusted Iorek. A trust that had yet to be misplaces. So instead of moving away or hiding behind Lee, she just gave the bear a hard look right back.

“I’ve done nothing but sleeping,” Lee said. “Let me guard for a bit. I’ll have my Winchester and Hester’s ears and we will know if there is a hint of danger. And we’ll wake you if there is.”

“You are still healing,” Iorek grumbled back, which is kinder than what Lee feared he might point out…that the last time Lee had been left alone in charge of the camp he most certainly had not kept guard.

“I can guard everyone while you’re sleeping,” suggested Lyra, before Lee could protest himself, which he was most definitely going to do. He had already slept for _two_ days; sure he felt sore still but he was on the mend and he could keep himself awake a few hours to let the bear sleep.

Iorek, who had not slept for two days, was starting to be short with everyone, even Lyra, even Hester and Pan, but he did manage to hold back his natural response to her offer, which was to laugh. He did not answer at all, in fact, which he likely thought answer enough, but it only encouraged the child.

“And the witches still haven’t left,” Lyra went on, “They won’t let nothing bad get to us. They helped us. They saved Mr. Lee.”

Iorek did not answer that either, not even to explain that the witches were part of the problem. He may have counted Serafina Pekkala as a friend, and she him, and he was grateful for her help…but her sister witches were also still around, and he felt them, smelled them, moving around the camp, and it put him on edge. To explain this would be to insult the very ones who had saved Lee Scoresby’s _life_ , and that Iorek could not do, so he said nothing.

He also did not say, though Lee and Hester suspected, that he had let himself drift down a time or two, only to instantly be attacked by his own subconscious, showing all the ways he failed and how much worse everything could have gone.

 _“Or until he dies,”_ the words whispered in his mind, the words spoken by Lee’s abductor, to the one holding a cane, and the man had _meant_ the words, and there was always a chance even Lyra’s appearance was not going to change that.

Lee never called Iorek on that, never suggested it was _fear_ that kept him awake, but he likely knew anyway because his next try was, “And if you ask, I bet they’ll let you sleep without dreams.”

Serafina Pekkala had already offered it to Iorek. But bears do not hide from their fear, they look it in the eye and face it down. And besides, the thought of being made to sleep was worse than any dream could be. What if he did not wake when he was needed? What if this fear, this _weakness_ , made him fail again?

“Please.” That was Lee. The honest plea surprised Iorek, like an arrow finding its way beneath a chink in his armor and striking true. Iorek could scoff at offers to guard for him, and he could growl at suggestions of need or fear…but Lee was offering nothing and suggesting nothing; he was asking.

And it had been two days. And Lee was improving.

“Fine,” said Iorek, and his friends gallantly refrained from doing a victory dance. “I will sleep. Do not approach me if I stir. I may fight in my sleep, and you will be hurt if you get in the way.”

That was more for Lyra and Pan; Lee and Hester had had their share of battles at the bear’s side, enough to know better than to approach him when he slept.

“They won’t,” Lee promised for them, but Iorek waited until the child nodded and said, “We won’t.” 

Then Lee, giving the bear a hard look, said, “Ten hours.”

“Four,” Iorek answered instantly, recognizing negotiation when he heard it. There was no way Lee actually thought Iorek would allow himself to sleep for ten hours straight, not when Lee was still in need of his own rest.

“Not near enough,” Lee answered, “If you don’t think you can manage ten, try for nine.”

“Can you just…decide how long you sleep?” asked Lyra.

“I can,” answered Iorek, and then, “Perhaps five. _You_ cannot stay awake much past that.”

“At least eight hours, Iorek,” said Hester, “That’s a night’s sleep, even if you could manage two nights worth. At _least_ that. I’ll keep him awake if he starts to nod.”

“He needs his sleep too,” Iorek argued. And then, “I will return in six hours.” And he did not allow further arguing but turned and left. He moved to find a place to lie that was protected, that would protect him from outside threat…and protect his friends from him, should he awake disorientated and raw.

“Where’s he going?” he heard Lyra whisper, and he heard Lee’s answer, “Bears are solitary at times. He will sleep better alone.”

“But he will sleep, won’t he?” asked Lyra.

“As best he can,” was Lee’s answer, which was not how Iorek would have preferred it said, but at least it was honest and acknowledged that Iorek was a bear of his word. “Now, I’ll just clean my Winchester; it could use some looking after, and you keep that pistol at ready. Try not to shoot any witches.”

“Mr. Lee!” was Lyra’s shocked response, likely at the idea that she would shoot a witch rather than Lee suddenly wanting them armed. Iorek appreciated Lee’s actions too; Lee likely knew Iorek could still hear and that he would be eased knowing they were taking guarding themselves seriously.

Iorek found a spot where he could curl in the dark, with stone at his back and roots at his front, hiding him, and he lay down, and felt his exhaustion rise up to meet him. He could not simply close his eyes and sleep, not after all that had happened, but he felt the edges of it approaching. The nightmares were there too, he could feel them coming. Well; he would face them as a good bear should and he would win.

He closed his eyes, listening to the soothing sounds of Lee cleaning his gun, and Lyra asking questions, and the less soothing sounds of the rustle of people around who he did not know intimately, who moved like wild things. Witches.

And then came a new sound. Lee Scoresby was _singing_. Lee and Hester both. Iorek growled, because he did not need a lullaby, never mind the fond warmth that filled his heart at that soft sound, never mind that it did soothe.

And then he slept.

The first hours he slept deeply, as deeply as only a bear can sleep, allowing body and mind to rest and recover. The final hour, however, as he started to pull himself up from his slumber, he went to battle.

Bears do not have nightmares, they have night _wars_. They face the fears they did not allow in their waking hours and they win over them. Iorek rarely had fears to face, because fear was related to regret, and regret was not an emotion true bears often felt. Bears knew what was right and what was wrong, and they did what was right. And when they do what is wrong, they own it. When Iorek killed another bear, he knew he was wrong. He did not dream about that, did not dwell, or wonder how it came to pass. Perhaps he should have; he might have known the deceit involved sooner.

When he lost his armor, _that_ he regretted. He had acted unbecoming, tried to forget in an entirely human manner, and he failed.

When he lost Lee Scoresby, that too was a failure, and everything about it was fraught with what-ifs. The right path was obscured, and Iorek could never be sure he had found the best way, could only be satisfied that it ended as well as it did.

Was it right or wrong to not run with Lyra the moment he had the chance, leaving his friend to his fate in order to safeguard the child? Lyra would say he acted rightly. Lee, with the benefit of having Lyra safe at his side, likely would assure him the same. But a good ending is not the same thing as a good decision.

Was it right to avoid the trap and allow Lee Scoresby and Hester their suffering? Lee and Hester would say yes. Lyra never protested, except in round about ways. But if Lee had died from the abuse…would his decision still have been right?

Was it right to send Lyra Silvertongue to see battle? Iorek knew for a fact that Lee was unhappy about that, knew he would be when he did it, but did Lee’s unhappiness make it wrong?

Iorek dreamed of what-ifs, all the ways everything could have gone wrong because of the decisions he made. The dreams stretched on too, time moldable in that space in-between wake and sleep. He watched Lee Scoresby die a hundred times. Watched Lyra crying and devastated. Felt his own death too, in fire and in blood, felt the full pain of his own heart torn open. Some say you cannot feel pain in dreams. That is not true. You feel it, it just does not matter to you in the same way as the waking world; there is a wall between you and the pain.

Iorek faced these deaths head on, as a bear faces its fears, with bared teeth and open claws.

Exactly six hours after he closed his eyes, he awoke with a snarl.

In that moment, had any stranger been before him, he might have gone for them, intent on destroying before he or those he loved were destroyed. No one was there though, familiar or unfamiliar.

He did not feel fully refreshed. Restless dreams make for restless sleep, and in any case six hours do not make up for two days. He felt better anyway. It was not just the deep sleep, either; facing his dreams had released their hold over him. He knew that his next sleep would be unmolested by past failures.

Lee Scoresby and Hester and Lyra and Pan were not so lucky in that regard. The witches had kept dreams at bay because they knew that to heal they needed deep rest (and even Lyra and Pan had healing to do, from trauma if nothing else). This could not be done forever, however, not without doing damage to them in other ways.

Iorek stretched, then shook his head, trying to shake free the last vestiges of dreams, to pull himself from the stupor his exhausted body wanted to fall back into. He was needed, and he was needed awake and alert, so that those he loved could afford to be weak.

He could hear them still. Lee Scoresby was still awake, still _humming_ even. Iorek wondered if he had kept that up the entire six hours. It seemed unlikely, if only because he did not sound hoarse.

Iorek did not run back to check on everyone. He could hear, he could _smell_ , and he knew all was well. He took some time for himself, drinking from the stream, even catching himself a fish. It was not near enough to fill a bear’s stomach of course, but it was revitalizing in its own way.

“Iorek!” Lyra exclaimed when he did lumber back into the camp. The child jumped up with arms wide, intent on a hug, only to hesitate, glancing back to where Lee was propped up on some blankets, his rifle laid across his knee and Hester in his lap. Iorek was slightly taken aback by the hesitation. He had gotten used to the child’s tactile affection and wondered what it meant for her to pull away.

“Go on, then,” Lee said to Lyra with an easy smile, in spite of the way pain still etched lines around his eyes. “I said there’s no need to jump him the moment he awakes. He’s awake good and proper now.”

Then Iorek got the hug he was expecting, and he was surprised to discover he felt relieved; to lose Lyra’s hugs would have been a true loss. He even went as far as to gently place his own paw over her shoulder. Then he looked at Lee, who was smiling at the sight.

“And now, you will sleep,” Iorek said. The smile tried to slide off, but the man was too pleased to see him to manage real annoyance.

“Go on, Lee,” said Hester. “I can feel your eyes starting to droop.”

“I slept for two days,” the man grumbled. “I am tired of sleep.”

“Sleep heals,” Hester said. “And I want some of that.” Which of course immediately made Lee give in, because he would always put Hester’s needs before his own. Which she knew. And used ruthlessly.

“Should you sleep with a rifle?” asked Lyra when Lee looked ready to snuggle down right then and there, clutching his Winchester like some kind of deadly safety blanket.

“No,” answered Iorek and Hester together, and Iorek went to take it from him.

Perhaps six hours had been pushing it; Lee was half asleep already, the moment he was given permission, in spite of all his protests to the contrary, and he grumbled incoherently when Iorek took his gun away from him.

“You did well,” Iorek told him softly, “You can sleep now.”

“And then you can sleep ‘gain,” Lee murmured, and then, “Hate this.”

“Yes,” said Iorek, because what else was there to say? He could not make Lee instantly better and he could not undo what was done. Not even the witches were able to cure in a moment, though it seemed to Iorek that Lee was already much more improved than nature alone should have made him. He was sore and bruised, but most all the open wounds had closed, and the last time Iorek had checked his ribs they were doing so well he almost thought they had not been broken.

Lee Scoresby slept and Iorek returned to keeping guard. He would keep guard until he was convinced all danger was past, and perhaps even then because he had not expected the danger that had come.

Then Lee Scoresby stirred in his sleep, making soft ‘nnn’ noises, like protests. This happened often, and usually Serafina Pekkala would approach and quiet him.

She appeared this time too, but she did not approach.

“I think he’s having a nightmare,” Lyra said, not exactly pointedly, but certainly factually.

“He is,” agreed the witch, and the expression she turned on the sleeping man was complicated. Compassion, perhaps, but a distanced compassion, the sadness of the long lived facing the pain of youth.

“You en’t going to…going to fix it?” asked Lyra.

“I have held his dreams at bay for long enough,” she answered. “Any longer and harm might be done. Sleep is the healer of the body and dreams are the healers of the mind.”

“They don’t feel healing, when they wake you up and make you jump,” Lyra said, tone still cautiously respectful even if she very clearly disagreed.

Serafina Pekkala smiled towards her. “No, I supposed they do not.”

“Dreams are the fears we need to face,” Iorek said. “When a fear comes, it is best to face it head on. That is how fear is defeated.”

“Maybe we’ll do that…next time,” Pan said.

“In the worst…in the worst you en’t there,” Lyra whispered to Pan, and held her daemon close. They looked at Lee, who was holding Hester, and wondered if the two dreamt together or apart.

Lee twitched, and made another noise, his whole body jerking and he blinked, opening his eyes for half a second, but they slid closed again. He was not quite woken up, no matter what battles his subconscious put him through.

Serafina Pekkala looked down at him, and loved him, and allowed him his harsh dreams.

“My sisters are leaving soon,” she said, looking at Lee and Hester, so it was hard to know if she spoke to the ones asleep or the ones awake. Then she turned her head to look at Iorek. “The fire started has been extinguished. The forest will not catch.” Perhaps that was admonishment there, but she never spoke the accusation. Iorek nodded his head in acknowledgement.

Then she turned around and walked out of their camp.

“Is…is she leaving too?” Lyra asked.

Iorek did not answer. He could not answer for another. Instead, he moved to lie near Lee, near enough for the man to feel his heat and the softness of his fur. And then he hummed, something soft, something from long ago memories of his own mother.

Dreams for bears are battlegrounds, and fears must be faced alone, but there is no reason a person could not have the support of his companions at his back.


	15. Chapter 15

Serafina Pekkala first heard the story of a man, a hare, and a bear flying in an airship from a whisper from between the worlds.

Lee Scoresby, as she would come to know the man, would have hated the fact that this whisper came years _before_ a young Texan made a near crash landing in Novy Odense where he would soon be surprised to see bears wandering the streets as if they were people. Lee Scoresby hated anything that touched on fate. He much preferred to think it was his choices that shaped his life. But then, being Lee Scoresby, was he ever going to make a _different choice_ than to offer his help where it was needed? And was there ever a Lee Scoresby who would have left a person in a tight spot just because that person was a bear?

Fate was not so much the lack of choice as the playing out of how things must go. Perhaps the fact that his airship was blown just _there_ , just _then_ , could be called fate, but all else was people being themselves in that right place and time.

The whisper fascinated her. As a witch, she had lived a long life, and she had travelled in that long life, and she had never known such a thing as a panserbjørn in a balloon, let alone one in the company of a man and a hare.

She did what she rarely bothered to do, and she went as far into the in-between spaces as she dared, and she asked for more information.

Whispers are not the same as stories, and there was more than one world, more than one bear and man and hare, whispers of destinies that would never be realized in _her_ world, just the potential for them to come to pass, whispers of a girl who was vital to existence…but not in this world…whispers of lives intertwined across worlds.

The day she met Lee Scoresby in person was the day her daemon flew to her side and said, “There is a fight gearing up in the forest.”

“Do we care about this fight?” she asked, curious, because Kaisa would not have sought her out over a normal skirmish between men.

“Some thirty men are in a rage over a killing among them,” Kaisa answered, clearly enjoying holding the story over her, feeding the pertinent details piecemeal.

“Men murder each other all the time,” Serafina pointed out.

“It is not a man they blame the killing on, but a bear,” Kaisa answered. “A bear with a man for a companion.”

“A man and a bear?” Serafina asked, instantly intrigued, as Kaisa knew she would be. “Is there a hare as well? Do they fly?”

“They were not flying when they were with the men,” answered the daemon, “And no one mentioned what form the man’s daemon took. They did say he had a busted arm, and that the bear cared for it. Showed great care for the man, _unnatural_ some said.”

“That is unusual,” said Serafina Pekkala.

“They will like as not be dead soon,” Kaisa commented, “Man, daemon, and bear. They were dragging a cart with them, a heavily laden one, and the men were all set to track it. They are many and the ones they hunt are few.”

“What do you know of the killing?” asked the witch, even as she took to the air, following Kaisa in the direction of the impending fight without having to ask. “ _Did_ the bear murder one of them?”

“If he did, I’ll bet it was deserved,” Kaisa answered. “Bears don’t kill for no reason, not panserbjørn anyway. There was some argument over the dead man. One said he found him…or what was left of him…high over their own camp. And his rifle was left lodged over stone. Do you know where it was aimed?”

Serafina pondered this for a moment, enjoying Kaisa’s enjoyment of the puzzle, before she said, “Towards the camp, I would imagine. Anything else would not be cause for comment.”

“That it was. The killed man spoke against the bear often, too. Some think he meant to take a shot at it, right into the camp. And if that is true, some of the men think perhaps he had it coming when the bear went for him, and they think maybe they should just let them go. But everyone is riled. Most do not like the idea of a man-eating bear out where they can’t see it.”

“Did the bear eat the man?”

“Only the heart, from the sound of it. Left a ghastly mess.”

They found the camp quite easily; smoke still rose from their campfire rings and some ten men sat around the carts, too smart to leave their camp entirely unguarded but knowing they’d need the bulk of them to face a bear.

The men did not see Serafina or Kaisa; men rarely bother to look up. Serafina did not announce her presence, just followed Kaisa, who showed her to where there were faint drag marks away from the camp; a heavy cart. Did it carry a grounded airship?

They followed the tracks, more swiftly and more easily than the men below, in fact passing over their heads some ten minutes down the trail. It was another half hour before they caught up with the ones being pursued.

There was an armored bear, just as Kaisa had said, young by the look of its incomplete armor, (a helmet, the beginnings of a chest piece, and one shin covered, the other three bare) but fully grown all the same. The man was riding on the cart while the bear pulled it, slowly but steadily over the uneven ground. The man’s arm was injured, just as Kaisa had overheard; it was tied firmly to his chest in some kind of sling, a bulky bandage wrapped around it.

There was a hare. Serafina had to contain a whoop of delight, because there was a man, and there was the armored bear, and the daemon riding at the man’s side was most definitely an arctic _hare_.

She might as well have whooped out loud, because just as she was close enough to see this, the hare’s ear twitched in her direction.

“Lee,” she said, “We got company.”

The man, quite naturally, looked around along the ground first, and for the first time Serafina noted the pistol the man held in his good hand.

“Up, in the trees,” Hester amended, and both man and hare looked up and found her. The bear stopped as well, turning and baring his teeth impressively. The pistol was fixed on her heart in a moment. Only for a moment. Once it registered to the man that he was not aiming at some unexpected ruffian, but rather at an unarmed, scantily clad woman riding on a pine branch through the sky, the pistol lowered, though it was clear it could be raised again just as swiftly if she proved a threat.

Ignoring the clear danger, (and to be fair, his goodness had been foretold to her) she did not draw her own weapon but flew down until she was level with the man and bear.

“What do you want?” asked the bear, no longer baring his teeth but not sounding particularly friendly either. Bears like to get straight to the point, though; to one used to them he came off more friendly than not.

“I am Serafina Pekkala,” she answered, while considering what she might want to tell them. The truth, but how much of the truth? “You are being hunted. I can help.”

“Hunted?” asked the man, before he turned to look at the bear. “Hunted?”

“How are you flying?” asked the hare, eyes wide. Kaisa landed next to her and, surprising just about all of them that weren’t daemons, settled himself so they were touching.

“Hester?” the man asked then. It was rare for daemons to interact with such closeness when they were strangers. But then, Serafina thought, maybe Kaisa did not think of the hare as a stranger; they had heard of their coming many years before after all. They knew their lives to be intertwined in subtle and strange ways, if not the exact details. The hare did not seem to mind the bird either; she did not so much as startle and not only allowed the close contact but nuzzled back.

It was unheard of for daemons to nuzzle up to enemies, and the man, after his surprise, relaxed almost completely and looked towards Serafina with unabashed curiosity.

“How _are_ you flying?” he asked, “If you don’t mind us asking.”

“I am a witch,” Serafina answered, a bubble of laughter and delight in her voice at this first meeting. It did not completely feel like a first meeting. It felt like a reunion with old friends. The man’s eyes went wide at her explanation.

“Witches are real?” he asked, before looking at the bear, and then laughing. “Well, if the north has armored bears, why not witches?”

“You said we are hunted,” said the bear, still not sounding particularly friendly towards her or Kaisa. Perhaps he had a point, though; if those men caught up (and they would, in the end) if it did not end in the death of all three it would likely at least end in heavy injury.

“Some twenty men are following after the tracks your cart leaves behind,” Kaisa answered. “They are riled over the killed man.”

“Killed man?” asked the man on the cart. He looked at Kaisa, then turned to look at the bear. “Was it Colby? I knew he’d try something…he didn’t hurt you did he?”

Serafina watched this exchange, fascinated to note how completely the man instantly had taken the bear’s side, showing no sign of doubt that any killing the bear did was both provoked and deserved. Serafina agreed, simply because she was familiar with armored bears; there might be bad bears out there (there were bad among _any_ people) but for the most part they were honorable. But men, she had noted, were usually distrustful of bears, looking at them as if they were only one step above their wild brethren. That this man did not share that view was _interesting_.

“It was the man called Colby,” the bear answered. “When I went to hunt, I discovered him on the ridge above the camp. He had his rifle trained to kill. I heard him speaking with his daemon. He intended murder.”

What the man said of the so-called Colby was both inventive and crude, at least until he glanced in her direction and turned bright red, saying, “Pardon my language, ma’am.”

“Your language is delightful,” she answered.

“Oh, don’t encourage him,” said the hare.

“Is he always so crude?” asked Kaisa, to which the hare said, “You have no idea.”

The man looked at them, as if he were unsure he was comfortable with his daemon’s newfound friendship, then returned to the point of the conversation.

“And I guess he meant to wait for you to get back from your hunt and take off your armor, and then he would shoot.”

The bear was silent for a moment, then admitted, “It was not me the rifle was aimed at.”

There was a longer moment of silence as the man and hare absorbed that. Serafina waited with interest to see if more colorful language would be forthcoming. It wasn’t. Either the man felt the need to censor himself this time around, or he was not nearly as riled at threats against himself as he was threats against his friends.

“How did he expect to get away with that?” the hare wanted to know. “He wasn’t popular enough to get away with _murder_ , not even a stranger.”

“I’d guess he’d have plausible deniability, being hidden up on the ridge,” the man pointed out. “But why would he aim at _me_? It’s _you_ he hated.” That was to the bear.

“He told his daemon he would remove the…unnatural…man from the world in front of his…friend,” answered the bear, slowly, tasting some of the words before he spoke, and clearly censoring himself from the language the man had really used.

“Called us hell spawn again, did he?” the hare asked dryly. “Went on about pets, and beasts, and fornicating, and all that nonsense?” They clearly had the measure of the man the bear had killed.

“Among other words,” the bear admitted. “I decided he needed to be removed. I informed him if he wished to battle an ungodly beast, I was ready to comply. He screamed a bit. Then he said ‘I am a good and godly man and I am ready to die. Pull the trigger.’ That was to his daemon, who was by the rifle. I did not allow them the time.”

“And then you came ambling down like nothing was wrong and just said ‘it’s time to go’” said the man with a raised eyebrow.

“And we left,” answered the bear.

“As fun as it is to get the full story,” said Kaisa, still practically cuddling against the hare, “Perhaps we should do something about the hoard of men coming for vengeance.”

“Yes,” said the bear. “We must leave the cart here and find a defensible location.”

“But…my balloon,” said the man. Serafina, it must be confessed, did let out a small whoop at that, swooping momentarily upward in the air before settling again. The others stared at her.

“Sorry,” she said. “It is just…I have waited a long time to meet a man who is friends with a panserbjørn and has a hare for a daemon, and who _flies_.”

“You…expected to meet our exact group?” asked the man, wrinkling his nose in confusion.

“It is a witch thing,” Kaisa intoned. “We are very glad to finally meet you.”

“Huh,” said the man. Then, suddenly, “Do pardon my manners, Ma’am. You said your name was….Sara Pekakola?”

“Serafina Pekkala, Lee,” said the hare, voice both admonishing and slightly smug for knowing. The man looked at the witch, and when she did not contradict his daemon, said, “A pleasure to meet you. I am Lee Scoresby, Texan by birth, aeronaut by trade, though a bit grounded at the moment. The arctic hare with a mouth on her is Hester…”

“Lee!” hissed said hare, clearly annoyed.

“…And the armored bear here is called Iorek. Pleasure to make your acquaintances.”

“I am Kaisa,” said the bird daemon, bowing his head regally.

“Now that is how you do an introduction, Lee,” hissed Hester towards Lee Scoresby. Serafina Pekkala should really have acknowledged them properly, but she was slightly distracted by staring at the bear.

“Iorek?” she asked, surprise clear in her voice, “Not…Iorek Byrinson?”

The bear nodded his head. Lee Scoresby and Hester looked confused.

“You know him?” he asked, and then, towards Iorek, “Do you know her?”

“I have heard her name spoken,” answered Iorek. “I do not know her personally. We have an understanding with her clan.”

There was another moment of silence, and it was clear Lee Scoresby was about to ask a lot more questions, when Hester said, “And the people coming to kill us…what are we doing about that?”

“I will kill them first,” answered Iorek, as sure in his actions as only a bear could be.

“Yeah, let’s have that be plan B,” Lee Scoresby said. “Here, we need to find a place that we can hold down. Damn, I wish I could use my Winchester. Say…don’t you think my arm…”

“It stays in the sling,” answered Iorek, not even letting Lee Scoresby finish his sentence.

“Damn it, Iorek, this is an emergency,” the man argued, before glancing at Serafina and saying, “Pardon again,” presumably for saying the word ‘damn’.

“There is no need,” said Serafina, not about the apologizing (though there was no need for that either, what did she care about _words_?) but about their hurried plans to defend themselves. “I will mislay your trail. You may continue on your way unmolested.”

“Is this another…witch thing?” asked Lee Scoresby.

“It is,” answered Serafina. Lee Scoresby peered hard at her.

“I do not know what to make of you,” he said, quite honestly, “But we’d be much obliged. I hate to kill if it en’t necessary. Those men don’t need to die because their friend was a fiendish murdering bastard.” This time he did not beg her pardon.

Serafina looked at him, tilting her head, studying him back with interest. “You would let them live…even though they mean to kill you?”

“It en’t right, killing if you don’t have to,” answered Lee Scoresby. “They’re men, same as I’m a man and Iorek’s a…a person. I’ve no call to go around killing them just because they’re scared.”

“I think I like you, Lee Scoresby and Hester and Iorek Byrinson,” said Serafina Pekkala. “And I will gladly save your lives.”

“We will return the favor if ever we can,” said Iorek, and it was clear he had Lee Scoresby and Hester’s full agreement.

“Our paths are intertwined by fate,” answered Serafina, which earned another wrinkled nose and a slight shudder from the man.

“That a witch thing too?”

“It is a people thing,” answered Kaisa for her. “All fates are intertwined, but some are more tangled than others. We have waited long to meet you.”

Then Serafina Pekkala left to obfuscate the trail as she had promised. Kaisa did not follow, seeming content to perch with the man and hare.

“Hey!” she heard Lee Scoresby call after her, “You left your…how?”

She did not return to answer, leaving it to Kaisa to explain about a witch’s daemon, though they all heard her laughter floating down behind her as she left.

This was their first meeting, and she would make sure it was not their last. Fate decreed their paths should pass many times, but even more than that, she found she liked the three of them. If it was in her power, she would not allow them to die young.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may have started writing a new story centered on Lee and Iorek...this interlude is born from that. I may or may not finish the story at some point and share it; if I do, you will get this story from a different perspective and with more detail, a few details I did not share and that Serafina would have no way of knowing. I try not to do more than one story at a time, (I have enough WIPs as it is) but I make exceptions for one shots and jotting down ideas as they come. Anyway...I feel like this story is drawing slowly to a close (the characters are being annoying and dragging their feet, but I think we'll still get there within a few more chapters), and there is more to play with in this universe.


	16. Chapter 16

_“Until he dies.”_

_“He’s been beaten utterly senseless.”_

_“They aren’t done beating him yet.”_

_“Don’t worry, sweetheart, it’s all over now. We’ve beaten him until he dies.”_

_“The bear is coming, get the net! Fire will kill it!”_

_“Burn it, burn it, burn it!”_

_“You cannot trick a bear.”_

_“Why don’t I just grab a hare?”_

_“Don’t worry, sweetheart, we’re going to gently kill them all. They’ll be fine.”_

_“Shoot it! Shoot it! Shoot ‘em all!”_

_“The prairie is on fire!”_

_“Cut…here.”_

“Perhaps I should send you to your father.”

Lyra woke up.

The dreams had been a jumbled mess of half memories and fear; some parts so real she could smell the blood splattered from Mr. Lee’s exploded head ( _and that never happened_ , and the dream changed through sheer force of _will_ , but then Mr. Lee was still bleeding and dying and that part was _real_ ), and some parts vague, more feeling than sight or sound, the sure knowledge that Iorek was dead and Mr. Lee was dead and Hester was dead (and in the dream, there was a small hare body, like there never would be in reality).

Lyra was a master storyteller, and her every instinct said she should have woken up screaming. Instead, she woke up silently, without stirring, without opening her eyes, while the residue of fear paralyzed her.

She could still hear her mother’s words, spoken so clearly she was not convinced she hadn’t heard them with her waking ears.

She did not dare to move. That was how nightmares usually took her; no dramatics, no screams or tears, just a terror in the dark and then lying still and frozen and awake, waiting and listening to be sure the monsters weren’t real, ready to pounce the moment she moved. Sometimes, Pan would shift into something fierce, then look around and tell her all was safe. Sometimes, when he was as taken as her by the nightmare, he would huddle in her arms and not move. This was one of those times.

They were not afraid of monsters, though, not this time. They were afraid to remember which part of the nightmare was true. What if Lyra only dreamed that they won. What if Iorek was burned up and shot, and Mr. Lee burned away with fever and bled out and died. And the men took her to her father, and her mother was there, and that was why she heard her voice?

And in that moment, upon first awakening, there was one fact Lyra was absolutely certain about.

She did not want her father (or uncle, as she secretly still thought of him). She wanted Mr. Lee. And she was terrified that Mr. Lee was gone, and Iorek was gone, and she felt more an orphan in that moment (never mind her living parents) than all the years she was at Jordan. And she stifled a sob.

“Mm…Lyra?” said a sleepy voice.

Her eyes shot open, and she sat up at once, turning, almost wild to see that her ears had not deceived her.

Mr. Lee was _alive_ , it had been a dream, and half wild with relief Lyra dove for the man. Mr. Lee flinched back even as he opened his arms, but even in her desperation for reassurance Lyra was careful, a strange combination of gentleness and raw need.

Mr. Lee had not sounded fully awake, but he was propped up like he hadn’t been sleeping; his own sleep had become haphazard, his need to heal pulling him down while his improving health started to leave him restless, and sleeping in the day was starting to lead to sleepless nights. It was dark out, but for the flicker of the campfire and the blaze of stars overhead. Lyra huddled against his side, wanting to feel his heart beating, to feel him breathe, and know the nightmare was a lie. Pan huddled almost as close in the form of a cat and Hester, yawning, climbed half on top of his smaller body like a mother hen settling over its chick.

“Lyra? Pan?” said Mr. Lee, sounding more awake this time. Then, with great sympathy as his hand settled warmly over her back, “Nightmare?”

“I didn’t face the fear,” Lyra said, mostly into his blanket because she did not dare burrow into his side like she wanted to in case she hurt him.

“What do you mean?” asked Mr. Lee. “You are the bravest girl I know.”

“In the nightmare,” said Lyra. “I didn’t face it like…like Iorek said. It just ran over me and…and everyone died. Because I didn’t lie right, and…and I was alone again.”

“You’re never alone,” said Pan, slightly muffled from under Hester.

“One of those dreams, huh?” said Mr. Lee, voice filled with sympathy. “Had a few of those myself. Only it was you and Iorek doing all the dying. Those are the worst, huh?”

“I myself dreamed of death,” came Iorek’s deep voice. “I looked at all the ways I failed.”

“You didn’t…” Mr. Lee started to say, but Iorek kept talking and Mr. Lee never finished his sentence.

“I saw all the ways I could have done something different. And each time I died, or Lee Scoresby died; sometimes even Lyra Silvertongue died, and that was the worst of all. But that is not how things happened. There is no better way for things to happen than how they happened. Because we all live and we are together.”

There was silence for a moment after that.

“Iorek,” said Lyra then, “How do you face your fear…when you’re asleep?”

“I look it in the eye,” answered Iorek.

There is a longer moment of silence, and Lyra feels herself starting to drift down in spite of herself, only to jerk herself awake again, heart beating fast.

“I don’t know I can,” she whispered, continuing the conversation some five minutes after everyone thought it ended. “I en’t brave enough.”

“You are brave when it _matters_ ,” said Mr. Lee.

“You are the bravest human I have met,” Iorek said, then, speaking over Mr. Lee’s muttered ‘ _hey_!’, “Perhaps humans face dreams differently than bears. Bears have armor. You have daemons. Perhaps…”

But he did not finish, trailing off into thoughtful pondering.

“Maybe I can fight in your dreams,” Pan suggested.

“Hear that, Lee?” asked Hester in a sleepy tone. “Next time you’re tossing and turning, call for me.”

“Should call for Lyra,” Mr. Lee mumbled. “Iorek’s right. She is the bravest of us.”

“Now you’re just teasing me,” said Lyra, scowling, but at the same time careful not to pull away or do anything to make the hand that lightly rubbed against her back stop its motion.

“I did not say she was the bravest,” said Iorek. “I said she was the bravest _human_.” Then, after a long moment, “I do believe Hester is the bravest.”

Both Hester and Mr. Lee laughed out loud at that. Under Hester, Pan complained, “What about me?”

“You are as brave as you need to be,” Lyra told him.

They lay in silence a while longer, and Lyra started to drift again, then jerked herself awake. She did not want to be brave, just then. She wanted to lie awake beneath the stars, and feel Mr. Lee still alive, and hear Iorek close (still alive too) and just know that everyone was alive and maybe she would never sleep again.

Mr. Lee paused in rubbing her back when he felt her jolt, then started again. Lyra could not in all her life remember a touch like that. Her mother never had; at most she held her hand, and sometimes pushed her around to get her to move how she wanted. Sometimes her touch was gentle, but it could just as quickly turn violent, a hand on her shoulder suddenly digging in, a quick hug turning into a shove. Back in Oxford, sometimes an adult would scrub her down when she got too dirty, or smack her if she was particularly misbehaved. Sometimes with other children they would hug or they would wrestle or they would fight, but never anything _gentle_.

All those years of living, and all those different hands touching her, and she never knew it could feel so good just having a hand rub up and down her back. She wondered if Pan felt that when she petted him, and no wonder he always wanted more.

“You don’t have to be strong now,” Mr. Lee whispered. “Never mind what Iorek said about facing fears. You just close your eyes, darling, and I’ll be at your side all night. Nothing will hurt me, and nothing will hurt you.”

Then he began to sing, soothing and soft and familiar. She had thought she had never had anyone to sing a lullaby to her before, but Mr. Lee had been singing that song in their camp for a month. She just thought Mr. Lee liked singing in the evening, and it happened to be generally around the time she snuggled down for sleep. Maybe he did, too, but maybe it had been on purpose all along, to lull her to sleep. That thought was almost as lovely as the hand on her back.

This time, when sleep pulled her down, she let it. The song followed her into her dreams, and perhaps that was why this time the nightmare didn’t come. Perhaps she had faced her fears…in a way.

And she slept.

Lee Scoresby kept up the soft lullaby until he felt Lyra’s breathing even out, and even then he continued to hum until he was absolutely sure the child was asleep, and not likely to startle awake again.

Then he lay in silence, and, to himself, admitted how much he needed her closeness just as she needed his. She was not the only one whose sleep was disturbed.

The worst of his dreams did end in everyone’s death, just as he told her, but there were others, some just as bad. Hands on Hester, not images just a sort of echo of the sensation. The gag. The blindfold. The cane against his back. Perhaps Iorek had some truth in speaking of nightmares as battles; it felt like his mind was wrestling with all that had happened every time he closed his eyes.

Half the time he slept anyway because his body demanded it, but never as long or as deeply as before when he had Serafina Pekkala’s help.

Serafina Pekkala had left with her sisters, but had waited until he was awake to say goodbye.

“I must leave, or I will do harm,” she said. She did not explain her words, though Lyra asked. Then, after she left, she asked Lee what the witch meant.

“I suppose it is part of being a witch,” Lee had answered. “She might look young but she has lived centuries. Living that long…I guess it gets harder and harder to be friends with people so short lived as we are to her.”

That had only confused Lyra more, but she finally accepted ‘it is a witch thing’, and later he heard her whispering to Pan, “I’ll bet she’s so full of magic she burns other people if she en’t careful…I’ll bet that’s the harm she’s avoiding. Let’s play I’m a witch and you be a bird.”

It was good to know the child could still play so lightheartedly. And Lee was very grateful that Lyra could not understand what harm Serafina Pekkala spoke of. Because, unless Lee very much missed the mark, he rather thought she spoke of harm to herself.

How much loving someone could hurt, knowing how soon you would lose them. Better to let go while you still can.

He held Lyra close in his arms and continued to rub her back even as she slept and wondered if he had put it off too late to not hurt himself. Better to enjoy now, and not think about Iorek returning to his people and Lyra and Pan returning to theirs and being left alone with Hester in a great big airship.

As if reading his thoughts, Iorek shifted closer, then said, “You should return to sleep, Lee Scoresby.”

“By and by,” answered Lee, admitting to himself, if not to Iorek, that his eyelids were starting to droop.

Being allowed to hold Lyra, to soothe her, felt like a gift. He had said he thought of her like she was his daughter, and he did, but up to that moment he had not fully understood how dangerous love could be.

He would defend her with his life, that was always true, but now he knew what it felt like to be the one turned to for comfort, to hold her in his arms, for her to find safety there enough to drift into sleep at his side…and he knew that this was a borrowed gift. The girl already had a father, and her mother had paid him to bring her to him. He had no right to her, none, and he knew in that moment that giving her away was going to break his heart.

“Hmm…Lee?” said Hester’s sleepy voice. It was rare for one of them to drift into sleep without the other, but it could happen, and had been happening more often lately as Lee’s need to heal had been greater than Hester’s (at least for _physical_ wounds).

“Yes?” whispered Lee softly, wary of the girl sleeping at his side. She did not stir.

“We could keep them,” said Hester.

Lee knew exactly what she meant. And he was shocked to the core, because he never expected _Hester_ to suggest it. He was so shocked, for a long moment he could not answer.

“What, are we thieves now?” he asked in the end, voice a soft whisper.

“You can’t steal what someone threw away,” Hester answered.

Lee said nothing to that. He understood Hester’s words, but they couldn’t be right. Lord Asriel hadn’t thrown Lyra away (how could anyone throw away a girl like her?). Lee didn’t even know the man; for all he knew, Lyra’s father had expected her nearly a month ago and was desperate with worry. Lee would be, in his place. Lee had to take her to him. He couldn’t be so selfish as to try and separate a girl from her father, just because his own heart was breaking. That wasn’t fair to Lyra.

But if Hester was right…if the impossible happened and Lord Asriel did not love his child with every fiber of his being…

Lee could not think on that. He knew it would hurt giving her up. It would _destroy_ him if he imagined there was a chance she could be his, and then it turned out he had to give her up anyway.

Then Iorek started humming. He tended to do that whenever he got it in his head that Lee Scoresby was thinking too hard and fighting against sleep.

“You need sleep too, you know” Lee mumbled towards the bear. “First thing tomorrow, I’ll stay up it’s your turn to sleep.”

Iorek did not stop humming, and, smiling in spite of his grumbling, Lee let himself drift downward.

There were no more nightmares that night.


	17. Chapter 17

Anna Koskinen’s arrow pierced the deer’s heart, gliding under a shoulder blade and between its ribs. It fell without a sound, quite possibly without even knowing it had died. The witch let out a whoop of triumph, thrilling in the precision of the hunt, then brought her bough to the ground so she could collect her prize.

It was larger than her usual prey; quite aside from the difficulty in using the entirety of it (though there are ways to preserve the flesh, witch ways and human ways), it was quite a challenge for someone of such a dainty build to haul the carcass to wherever she wanted it. She was stronger than she looked, but muscles alone cannot make an awkwardly large and heavy bundle less difficult to handle.

She considered this as she landed, judging its weight with her eyes and how well her cloud-pine branch would bear its weight. It could do it for a short while flying low, she supposed, though she would look rather silly with a deer hanging below her. Still, that could not be helped; it was too far to drag it all the way.

She did not apologize to the deer for killing it. Witches never apologize for a kill, whether a sacrifice, for food, for mercy, or for vengeance. A witch apologizing for a death she caused would be a remarkable circumstance and one Anna Koskinen had yet to experience. Death was natural, and in any case, there was no one left to hear the apology; bodies do not listen. 

The reason for this death (and the reason she chose such large prey) was a gift for new friends, or rather, something akin to a reciprocation. English did not have a proper word for such gifts, though boon came closest. It was the give and take that existed between witches, favors for favors, without tally or expectation or promise, but understood all the same.

The little family in the forest fascinated her, and if there was one thing she pursued above all others, it was a new experience.

“Perhaps I will stay,” she had said to her queen when Serafina Pekkala thought perhaps the time had come for them to leave. The fire was truly extinguished. Some had already left. 

Serafina Pekkala gave Anna Koskinen a puzzled look at that statement, then narrowed her eyes and said, “You will be _careful_ , Anna Koskinen. If you harm those I named friends, I cannot promise I will not harm you in turn.”

Anna Koskinen accepted the warning with a deep fascination. She had watched Serafina Pekkala watch over the injured man and _wondered_. She knew the queen had taken to men in the past, had born a child to one. All witches were sensual beings, but how that manifested itself differed from witch to witch. Anna Koskinen could not imagine herself tethering herself to a single man, to make herself _lesser_ and deny her witch-hood just to play happy family. But Serafina Pekkala loved deeply and gave of herself to each and every lover. It was what made her a good queen. That she loved Lee Scoresby was unquestionable and understood by all the clan, but _how_ she loved him was unknown.

“Was he your lover?” Anna Koskinen asked, overcome by curiosity, and then, because it was only polite, “Are you adverse to sharing?”

For a long moment, Serafina Pekkala did not answer, just _looked_ at her sister witch with an inscrutable stare. Her answer, when it came, was so unexpected that it delighted Anna Koskinen even as it disappointed her.

“Lee Scoresby is uninterested in passion with women.” Which was not exactly a yes or a no to either question, but distracting enough for Anna Koskinen to not notice at the time.

“Really?” she purred, turning the idea around in her mind. She had heard of men who shied away from a woman’s touch, but had yet to meet one. Then, “Him and the bear?” because that was the natural conclusion. Serafina Pekkala laughed out loud, and Anna Koskinen joined her though she did not understand the joke, simply enjoying the revelry of the laughter.

“I think neither is interested in an inter-species relationship,” Serafina Pekkala said, when she was finished laughing. To that, Anna Koskinen shrugged, and then got a considering expression and said, “I suppose the bear then, would not…”

“I very much doubt it,” answered her queen, still smiling gently. Certainly, the idea of an inter-species relationship was not the slightest bit shocking to a witch. Most of their relationships were inter-species anyway, particularly if they cared to have children. A witch might _look_ like a human woman, but they were not, anymore than Hester was really a hare or Pan was really whatever animal he changed into. Anna Koskinen had never considered lying with a bear before, but once the idea was happened upon, it seemed quite intriguing.

Where Serafina Pekkala gave of herself to those she loved, and so guarded her heart accordingly, Anna Koskinen loved and accepted love freely and without reserve or regret. She loved each and every one of her lovers, and could still recall the details of their names, the stories they told her, the times they shared, but always fondly and with a smile, and she felt no pain at partings. If Lee Scoresby or Iorek were amenable, she would have gladly spent a night or two between them. That Serafina Pekkala thought neither would be amenable…

“They interest me,” Anna Koskinen said next.

“They will none of them want what you are looking for,” Serafina Pekkala warned again. “And if you push and they deny you would you…” She looked closely at her friend, wrinkled her nose, and finished with, “But _you_ would not push, of course, or rend your heart over what is denied. _They_ cannot harm _your_ heart. Stay if you like…if they do not mind. But I think you will be bored.”

“Did they break _your_ heart, sister?” Anna Koskinen asked, studying her queen just as deeply as she had been studied. Serafina Pekkala considered that.

“They will,” she decided. “But not yet.” Then Anna Koskinen hugged her for the heartache to come, and kissed her on the lips, which Serafina Pekkala allowed and smiled into but did not return. And Serafina flew and Anna Koskinen watched her go.

Kaisa stayed. Anna Koskinen stared at Serafina’s daemon, wondering, but unsure what to ask. She could sense her own daemon some distance away. Aake was enjoying the freedom of the air and the feel of wind over his feathers.

“You mean to approach the man,” Kaisa said, giving her a knowing look as only a bird can. “And if not him, then the bear.”

“I suppose,” answered Anna Koskinen. “Serafina Pekkala could be mistaken.” If nothing else, Serafina and Anna loved in different ways; a man might be interested in Anna’s momentary passion where Serafina’s more complete, more long-term love could make a man run.

She wondered if the bird would chide her, if he had stayed on Serafina Pekkala’s behalf to guard the little family from her dangerous wiles. But the bird did not chide. Instead, he said, “This will be amusing, then.” And he settled in a tree.

“Yes, it will,” Anna Koskinen agreed, enjoying the impending pleasure of the unknown. And if all else failed, they were taking the girl to Lord Asriel, and perhaps he would be interested where the man and bear were not. She had certainly had interesting times with him before, until he became boring.

She decided to go hunting because gifts are the best way to incite favors, and she was not completely unaware that her staying could be an intrusion. She did not think they would outright tell her to go, not when her queen had saved the man’s life, not when her clan had declared them friends, but a gift would certainly help. Besides, she would leave them at some point or other, and preferred not to have the thought of them being owed her favor hanging over her. Better to start with the gift, then take whatever she could get from them.

The deer hanging from her bough looked just as silly as she feared if her daemon’s laughter was anything to go by. He, enjoying the absurd and the new just as much as she did, had joined her again just to watch. She flew low, only just keeping the deer from touching the ground, in part because it was easier and in part to avoid the chance of being seen by her sisters. They had left, but there was no guarantee they had gone far.

She landed just short of the camp. She thought she had managed it quite silently, gently laying the deer on the bed of pine needles next to the river, her feet alighting as delicately as a feather, but perhaps she had not been quiet enough.

She looked towards the hidden place where the bear had arranged things and found she was looking down the barrel of a gun. Had she not known the people were there, she might not even have noticed, but she was looking for them and saw at once.

“Oh, it’s you,” said the man’s voice, and the gun pulled away. She pouted and dropped the bolt she had begun to draw back into its quiver.

“Is that how you greet your guests?” she asked, “And I brought you a gift.”

“Who is it?” she heard the child’s voice. “Are you going to shoot them?”

“Just keep hold of that gun and…try not to shoot me,” said the man’s voice, and then he emerged to greet her properly, ignoring the child’s indignant cry behind him.

Anna Koskinen looked the man up and down as he walked slowly towards her. He walked stiffly still, a slight limp and his face tense from his aches and pains, but this was still a huge improvement on before, when he could not rise unaided from his bed. He did not look altogether happy to see her, which was disappointing, but not entirely unexpected. He looked pained but curious, which she could work with, but his hare was outright glaring.

“Miss Koskinen,” he said, “I apologize about the gun; we were not expecting…visitors. And Iorek has finally agreed to a good long nap so I promised to keep my guard up.”

“It is no matter, Mr. Scoresby,” she answered. Then, “I have brought you this deer.”

“Iorek en’t going to be pleased about that,” said the child, coming out to join them.

“Lyra,” said the man with a sigh, “I thought I left you to guard.” Anna Koskinen took that as a promising sign; he wanted to be alone with her. Perhaps Serafina Pekkala _was_ mistaken. She was not sure whether she was pleased or disappointed; a man uninterested in her would be something utterly new, but a man interested would be a thousand times more fun.

“I can guard out here just fine,” the child answered stubbornly before turning a glare on her to rival the hare’s, the gun in her hand aimed towards the ground but more in her direction than not. “And bears don’t _like_ being hunted for. It implies you think they can’t hunt for themselves. Iorek told me. He said he’d be _ashamed_ to let another kill for him.”

The man looked up at the sky, as if contemplating the very heavens, and Anna Koskinen found herself looking up as well, enjoying the sun dancing over her bare skin.

“Lyra, darling,” said the man, turning from the sky to the child, “I have seen Iorek on many occasions accept food from communal plates that he had no part in killing. Now, why don’t we set about preparing this fine gift, and give our thanks for it, and when Iorek wakes up he will have a lovely surprise waiting for him.”

“He won’t like it,” said Lyra, but in a whisper this time. Then, towards Anna Koskinen, still mostly in a whisper, “I thought you all left.”

“I decided to stay,” answered the witch, glancing towards the child but keeping most of her attention on the man. “You are taking the girl to her father, are you not? I have known him and would not be opposed to accompanying you on your way. I know the way quite well; we could be there in a week of light travel, particularly if your airship were mended.”

The man’s face did something complicated then, emotions she could not understand flickering across his features, masked by the overall pain that still held his expression tense.

“A week?” the child shrieked, sounding utterly appalled, and her daemon, who had turned into some kind of fanged rodent when they came to greet her, hissed, “Hush,” and then, apropos of nothing, “Iorek”. The child put a hand over her mouth, then glanced guiltily behind her.

“I’d like a few more days before we move on,” the man answered calmly. “I don’t doubt Iorek will insist on it, even if I am up and walking.”

“There are ways to ease your suffering…warm your muscles…” Anna Koskinen purred. The man blinked, staring at her as though hypnotized and she stepped closer to him until they were almost touching and she could feel the heat of his body and he could feel hers. 

“Er,” he said, drawing his head back and practically crossing his eyes as he tried to keep them trained on her face. “I mean…Serafina Pekkala left some herbs that have helped quite a lot…”

“Oh, not again,” muttered his daemon at his feet, then, “Lee, she en’t talking about _herbs_.”

“We are taking care of Mr. Lee just fine,” the girl muttered, but softly. Lee Scoresby took half a step back, looking confused, and his hare sighed.

“Listen, lady…” The hare trailed off, perhaps trying to find a way to politely inform her that Lee Scoresby was not interested in what she had to offer. The hare did not need to say anything, though. Anna Koskinen was very close to the man’s face, close enough to note the lines around his eyes, the way he looked tired, and pained, and slightly curious, slightly confused. She could _smell_ him, the wonderful scent of man mixed with woodsmoke over the faint unpleasant scent of illness mixed with blood and bloodmoss. What Anna Koskinen did not see, and she was very good at seeing this no matter how men tried to hide it from her, (no matter how they protested that she was seeing things), what she did not _smell_ , was an answering interest.

“Fascinating,” she said next, looking more closely still, trying to decide if his injuries were affecting him too greatly for such primal urges to overtake him or if there were simply no primal urges hiding within him.

“Can I…help you?” asked Lee Scoresby, looking less curious and more confused now while she went up on her toes to better sense him.

He took another stiff step backwards, the heel of his foot ran into a branch, and he started to fall. Both Anna Koskinen and the girl grabbed for him, the girl’s daemon instantly something large and furry to brace the man, and between the three of them they kept the man upright.

“Sit down, Lee,” the hare said then, and the girl positioned herself like a crutch beneath his arm, saying, “Here, I’ll walk you over to the log.”

“I can walk myself,” the man grumbled, but Anna Koskinen recognized male pride when it was at work, and she noticed he made no move to pull away from the child. She wished she had been fast enough that it was her he leaned on but did not try to push herself between them.

“Listen to the girl, Lee,” his hare ordered, cuddled against the girl’s daemon. It was a bear, Anna Koskinen realized, a small one, to be sure, and brown rather than white, but a bear nonetheless. She wondered if that was down to the influence of their companion or if it was simply one of the largest forms the daemon knew. The bear was nuzzled against the man too. Of course, there was a layer of clothes between them, but the man would be able to feel the warmth and solid support of the daemon.

The bear made her think on the small group’s missing companion.

“Your bear friend is napping, you said?” she asked, while the man allowed himself to be drawn over to the log.

“He _better_ be,” answered the man, as he sat. The girl’s daemon settled at his feet, and his hare settled on top of the bear. The man stared down at them, his expression a mixture of crankiness, pain and fondness, and the girl settled on the log at his side.

Kaisa flew over to Anna Koskinen, settling on the same branch that her own Aake had chosen, close enough that their feathers brushed against each other.

“You won’t be pushing yourself into that family,” Kaisa remarked to the witch. “Their bond is of sky-iron.”

“I could have told you that,” Aake commented, sounding amused, and Anna Koskinen pouted. She never pouted for long, however, and already she was admiring the very bond tying the little family together.

“No,” she said, sounding pleased rather than disappointed, “Well, I never intended to. Daughter is not exactly the role I was looking for.” Then, thoughtfully, “There is still the bear…”

“Iorek?!” the hare asked, with a surprised laugh, then, “Good luck.”

“Thank you!” Anna Koskinen answered.

“Good luck for what?” the girl whispered towards the man, and then, “What does she want from Iorek?”

“Er…” said the man, and Anna Koskinen was fascinated by the fact that it was not embarrassment that stilled his tongue, but genuine confusion. His hare sighed again.

“She’s interested in a _relationship_ ,” the hare explained.

“Oh,” said the man, the word long and drawn out, then he glanced in her direction and said, “Things make so much more sense now.”

“No, they don’t,” the girl said. “She wants a relationship with Iorek? How would that even _work_?”

And now the man’s face started to turn red, and this time his ‘er’ was most definitely related to embarrassment.

The hare laughed, then her ear twitched and she said, “Oh…you are going to be so annoyed.”

The man did not seem to hear her, still staring at the child and fumbling for a reply. “I guess…well…what do you think a relationship means?”

“En’t that when a man and a woman make eyes at each other, and want to kiss all the time, and then they get married. Only my parents didn’t because Mr. Coulter was already married to Mr. Coulter…and they…” she trailed off, either not knowing or not feeling comfortable talking about how she was conceived.

“Well,” said, the man, “Sort of. Relationship just means a…a connection between two people. Sometimes two people enjoy each other’s company just…being together. They don’t all end in marriage.”

“And she wants that with _Iorek_?” the girl repeated, as if that were the most ridiculous idea she had ever heard.

“Who wants what with Iorek?” asked an unexpected voice, deep and sleepy. The bear had joined them after all.

“Oh, now look what we did, with all our talking and shouting,” the man grumbled.

“Iorek!” the girl exclaimed, and then, chiding, “You are meant to be sleeping.”

“I heard a stranger’s voice,” the bear said, and looked in Anna Koskinen’s direction. “I see now it is not a stranger.”

“I came with a gift,” Anna Koskinen answered, gesturing towards the deer, and then waiting to see if the girl was correct and the bear would be annoyed. That would not be a perfect start to their relationship, but surely even a bear understood the concept of different cultures having differing value systems and could appreciate the gesture.

“I see,” said the bear. He did not say thank you, but nor did he reject the gift, and Anna Koskinen accepted that as a win.

“Told you,” said the girl, clearly taking it as a win too, and Anna Koskinen magnanimously allowed her to feel her victory. The man sighed. The bear lumbered towards him.

“You have been up too long,” said the bear, bringing his face close to the man’s.

“No, I _haven’t_ ,” the man answered, twice as snappish as the tones he took with the girl when she tried to get him to sit. “I am _fine_. I have been _sleeping_ and _sitting_ for days and days and being up and walking a bit will do me _good_. And _you_ only got about seven hours, and you could do with another _seven_.”

“There was an unknown voice,” the bear repeated, and the man sighed, then leaned forward, putting his hand on the bear’s head.

“What did I tell you,” asked Kaisa. “Sky-iron.” And then, quite smugly to Anna’s eyes, the bird flew down and settled his body next to the bear daemon and the hare. Anna Koskinen glanced at her Aake to see if he felt inclined towards daemon snuggling, but he stayed on his branch.

“You will have a time getting airborne from there,” he called to Kaisa.

“No, I won’t,” Kaisa answered, and he definitely sounded smug. “The bear will give me a boost.”

Anna Koskinen looked at the little family, huddled around the man, their daemons intertwined, and decided she was absolutely right. This was going to be interesting. She was so glad she decided to come. And she could help them, too. She had brought a deer, and she knew the way to where Lord Asriel awaited his daughter (would Lord Asriel and Lee Scoresby…now _that_ would be truly interesting…and they did have the girl in common between them).

And maybe the bear would be interested once he was more awake.

Smiling, humming to herself, she let the little family bully the man into returning to rest while she busied herself in preparing the deer.

This was a wonderful idea.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So....this took longer to finish than I anticipated. Good news though; the story is almost done. One or two more chapters should do it. So I can finish it and hopefully not drag it out for years. I hope.

“This is a horrible idea,” said Hester, staring up at the zeppelin from her perch just behind Iorek’s head. In fact, her preferred perch was on top of Iorek’s head, but as the bear was currently looking up as well, even leaning back slightly on his back legs to do it, it was not a prudent place to sit for either of his current riders.

“It would…certainly be faster,” said Lee, who clearly had mixed feelings on the matter. He liked flying, and he hated being a passenger for their travels, and he felt it his responsibility to get Lyra to her father as quickly as possible but…he did not want the journey to end.

“Oh, I knew you would love it!” said Anna Koskinen, sweeping around their heads.

“I’m with Hester,” said Lyra. “It’s a horrible idea.” As Lyra tended to think all of the witch’s ideas were horrible, that opinion might not have held much more weight than that of a petulant child’s, except neither Iorek nor Lee were inclined to treat her views as such and, at any rate, she had some rather good points to back up her opinion. “Those…those evil men came from it. What if more find us if we take it? What if we’re taken for…for bandits and shot from the sky? Anyway, anything they had is bound to be full of…of horrid things.”

“Nonsense,” said Anna Koskinen. “I looked all through it. The worst thing I found was the remains of its pilot, and those were easily returned to the earth. It does not even smell.”

Lyra continued to frown, clearly not swayed.

“It would carry your balloon, Lee Scoresby,” said Iorek, and Lyra’s frown deepened even as the bear finished with, “We would need to leave nothing behind.”

Iorek did not say, ‘and I would not have to carry you or pull a cart like a common pack horse all the way back to civilization’ because that was not something Iorek considered as a burden. Lee did not say it either, but he did think it, because he did care about being a burden to his friends.

Lee did not want to take the zeppelin, but he knew it was the right choice. He glanced at Lyra, and he rather thought she knew it too, and was dead against it anyway, judging from her scowl.

“…Lyra,” Lee began, because as much as he did not want to shorten their time together, he especially did not want their last days together to be spent in stony silence or anger. “Your father…I got you lost in the wilderness and now we can get unlost…without making Iorek drag my balloon, without my limping along or…or”

“Iorek can pull you with the balloon,” Lyra pointed out. “He wouldn’t mind.”

“I would not mind,” Iorek agreed. Lyra grinned in triumph until Iorek said, “But I do believe Lee Scoresby will find flying a more comfortable ride.”

“I’m not made of porcelain, you know,” Lee grumbled. But Iorek’s words had done what Lee’s had not and Lyra stopped scowling up at the zeppelin and started giving Lee sideways sort of looks. That, in Lee’s opinion, was _worse_ than the scowls. “You know, actually, I think walking is the way to go,” he said.

“Good sense in that,” Hester said, and then she poked him on a sore spot, gently but unexpected, making him wince back. “Riding has more sense, down here or up there.”

“I could walk,” Lee protested, though his argument might have had more merit if he weren’t currently sitting on Iorek’s back. That had been a compromise when he had refused to wait at the camp while they came to see Anna Koskinen’s ‘great idea’ for aiding in their journey.

“Of course, much depends upon whether Lee Scoresby has the ability to direct this aircraft,” Iorek pointed out.

Lee did not immediately answer because he was too busy sputtering in outrage at the idea that he lacked the ability to fly.

“He has a point, Lee,” Hester said; “Zeppelins aren’t exactly the same thing as what we’re used to…and the balloon has given us plenty of uncertain moments.”

“If I can fly a balloon with half the instruction manual missing and I’ll have you know I’ve never had a flight I didn’t walk away from yet, then…then that fancy contraption up there en’t going to give me a lick of trouble!”

“I can always offer my aid in guiding the craft, should the need arise,” Anna Koskinen put in.

“And I can be your copilot,” Lyra insisted.

“Now hold up,” Lee said, starting to feel just the slightest bit played, “We still need to make sure this thing is safe.”

“I found nothing of danger,” Anna Koskinen objected.

“And you fly around on a tree branch. Forgive me, Ma’am, if I take the time to have a look over the machine myself.”

Doing so was not quite as simple. The zeppelin was entangled in a tree. To bring it down risked both damaging it further or grounding it without means to help it lift after. Bringing Lee up to it either meant him climbing, which he was willing to try but no one else was willing to let him, or a ride with Anna Koskinen, which was uncomfortable to contemplate for completely different reasons, for all of them. Lyra and Pan because they did not want the witch hanging onto their Mr. Lee. Iorek because he did not fully trust the witch; he considered Serafina Pekkala a friend but scarcely knew this witch, and allowing those he did not trust near his injured friend was trying. Lee and Hester because the woman had made her interest in them very well known and it was awkward to be as intimately close as a flight would necessitate. And Anna Koskinen because she was not entirely sure how well her bough would support the extra weight, and that could be embarrassing.

The finally settled on a pulley system with Iorek doing the pulling and Anna Koskinen acting as a sort of safety net, ready to swoop in if there was trouble. There was not trouble though; the ropes they used were strong and Iorek was more than enough to do the lifting. The most annoying part was figuring out how to do the seat for Lee and Hester to ride; Lee thought a loop for his boot sufficient while Lyra and Iorek whispered about elaborate constructions to ensure his ability to not fall did not rely on his ability to hold on.

They compromised and had a sort of swing Lee’s end when Lee started to point out the lateness of the day and that they still needed time to return to their camp (a good hour’s walk away even at Iorek’s brisk pace) before dark.

“Are you ready, Lee Scoresby?” Iorek asked, once the rope was arranged using the convenient pulley already attached to the zeppelin (the previous users had had a similar arrangement for getting people up and down; a ladder just did not cut it when one had a wolf daemon, it was only too bad the original rigging and basket had gotten burned in the fire).

“Ready and willing,” Lee answered with more spirit than his physical appearance suggested. In fact, he looked rather worse than he felt, what with the late stages of bruising and the way that bloodmoss dulled what remained of the worst of the welts or his surgical wound. He was sore and moved stiffly and tired easily but he felt well enough to grow annoyed with how everyone tiptoed around him.

“Are you ready, Hester?” Iorek asked next.

“As ready as we can be,” Hester answered from her position in Lee’s pocket. She looked better than Lee by this point; daemons don’t hold wounds long, though scars often remained. That did not mean nothing lingered; she was still skittish when anyone moved close to her who was not Lee, and she had long moments of silence when even Lee did not get a spoken answer to a question. No one spoke of it, but Lyra, Iorek, and Pan all knew.

“Then hold on tight,” Iorek ordered, and finally he did pull and Lee and Hester rose. Getting off the swing into the zeppelin was tricker than Lee would admit to, but he did not push Anna Koskinen away when she offered her help, which spoke volumes for the aeronaut’s difficulties.

He took his time looking at the zeppelin.

“Can you fly it?” asked the witch, looking over his shoulder at the controls. For a long moment, Lee did not answer.

In truth, the assumption that a pilot of one craft can easily fly a completely different craft is nonsense; aircraft come in many varieties and all of them have their tricks and quirks, and getting it wrong tended to be more fatal than mistakes in landbound crafts. But at the same time, all aircraft have similarities. This one’s instruments were not unfamiliar to Lee; there was one to say how high they were, and one to track direction, and one that likely had to do with air pressure, and another for speed.

The controls were not utterly alien to Lee, and not just because he flew his own balloon.

“I’ve seen one piloted before,” he answered the witch. And then, “I can fly it.”

“Oh?” answered Anna Koskinen, instantly interested by his words. “When was this?”

Lee did not answer right away. Finally, he said, “There was a battle. We fought in it. Rode in one of these for a bit. I was curious; I watched the pilot fly it.”

“But you’ve never flown one yourself?” Anna Koskinen asked, not judging, simply sounding interested.

“Briefly,” Lee answered. He glanced towards Hester, half expecting her voice to chime in with ‘you mean we crashed one, once’ and then he would have to explain the whole story or everyone would think he could not fly. That he knew what he was doing when he crashed it, and it was perhaps one of the worst things he ever had to do, but he did tell those soldiers to jump first and if they chose not to it was their choice and Lee and Hester survived it all and Iorek was safe. But Hester kept his secrets, just scooted closer to him, offering comfort.

Then Lee went back to the door and called down, “It will fly!”

Of course, things did not happen directly. All their things were still back at the camp and they needed to be carted and brought and then hauled into the zeppelin, and it was late already so really all this had to happen in the morning. And in-between there was discussion and arguments because no one was completely sure this was a good idea except for Anna Koskinen, who smiled the whole time and looked puzzled whenever someone came up with a reason against it.

Breaking up the camp had its own difficulties.

“I will do this,” Iorek said. “You will lay still and watch that all is done well.”

“It’s my balloon, I should be the one loading it up,” Lee answered.

“Do you not trust me with your balloon, Lee Scoresby?”

Which was unfair, especially when said in that tone, sad and low. Lee started to answer, then glanced towards Lyra and Pan, and swallowed his first words.

“Darn it, Iorek, you know I trust you,” he answered when he felt he could get the words out cleanly. Lyra probably already knew worse words but that did not mean Lee had to expand her vocabulary himself.

“Then I will do this,” Iorek said, tone satisfied, “And you will watch.”

“What do you want us to do?” the child asked.

“Sit on Lee to hold him down,” Hester suggested.

They got the cart loaded in the end, mostly Iorek, but everyone helped, even Anna Koskinen, though her help was more along the lines of spreading the ashes of their firepit and encouraging the forest to swallow all traces that they had ever been there. Not that there had been much trace anyway; a bear knew how to build a camp that blended into the surroundings.

Getting everything into the zeppelin was more awkward than difficult. With a pulley and a bear there was no difficulty with the lifting, but moving it inside was not so easy even with Anna Koskinen pushing from atop her bough and Lee and Lyra pulling it in.

Getting Iorek into the zeppelin was the hardest part of the entire process, and even that proved easier than anyone thought. Even as the others were putting their heads together to figure out how they could pull him in, Iorek calmly sat himself on the same swing the others had used and, just as easily as he had pulled them up, he pulled himself up. He was already half inside before the others even knew he was coming.

“Iorek!” Lee scolded when the bear made the whole structure tilt as he scrambled inside. “You should have waited for us to help.”

“And you should not have exerted yourself as you have,” Iorek answered, looking closely at his friend, and making the others look closely as well. Lee wanted to object, strongtly and at length, but now that he was sitting still it turned out he had exerted himself rather hard in getting everything and everyone settled.

“You look awefuly pale, Mr. Lee,” Lyra put in, frowning.

“M’fine,” Lee mumbled, which was practically an admission of not being fine, because if he were fine he’d have had a lot more to say about it and he wouldn’t be sitting still and breathing heavily and looking likely to fall over at any moment. Then, “Just give me a moment and I’ll have us flying.”

“We are in no hurry,” Iorek assured him.

“M’fine,” Lee said again. And then, “Don’t look so worried.”

“Are you worried?” Anna Koskinen asked, curious, and peering hard at the bear. As far as she could tell his expression had not changed.

“Let us have some food,” Iorek said instead of answering.

Lee was absolutely certain he would feel better after a bit of a rest and some food. So it was rather startling to blink his eyes open some time later and realize he had been asleep. More to the point, it was growing dark; he had slept for the entire afternoon.

“Hmm-what?” he said, blinking away the last vestiges of his slumber. Then, “What time is it? Why didn’t you wake me?”

“We were all tired,” Lyra pointed out. The girl was curled next to him, not asleep, but not restless either, Pan a small brown hare nuzzled at her side.

“It is better to rest well before our journey,” Iorek said, not resting, but vigilantly keeping watch, looking outward. Anna Koskinen was perched near him, one bird on her shoulder, another perched on Iorek.

“It will be too dark to fly, soon,” Lee complained, not wanting to admit to himself how much better he felt after his nap. Better in some ways at least; he also felt stiff and sore as he always seemed to get when lying still for too long. He stretched, forcing his muscles to move no matter how they protested.

“You have flown many times at night before,” Iorek pointed out.

“In my balloon, which I know. This thing…it’ll be tricky enough in daylight.”

“I can fly before you to guide your way and lead the wind in your favor,” Anna Koskinen suggested.

“I can keep watch from above and alert you to dangers as well,” Serafina Pekkala’s daemon said.

“And I as well,” Anna Koskinen’s daemon agreed.

“And I can be your copilot,” Lyra announced.

Getting the zeppelin free of the tree was simple with a witch to help; as much as Lee often felt annoyed by her presence he had to admit she was not a bad friend to have. She more or less asked the tree to led them go, and then nudged and prodded at the craft, and they were free.

“You sure we can do this?” Hester whispered softly as Lee made himself comfortable at the controls. Lyra and Pan were distracted by figuring out their own seat and looking at all the instruments and switches with keen interest.

“If I can crash it, I can fly it,” Lee answered, surprising himself with how much eagerness filled his voice. He had gotten so used to his own snappishness during his recovery that he had almost forgotten what it felt like to not be sore and restless and annoyed.

He had forgotten what it feels like to watch the world sliding away below, as he took to the air and _flew_.

“What does that do?” Lyra asked, and Lee grinned, buoyed on her enthusiasm and the sight of the sky above. It was not his balloon, and it lacked the feel of the wind in his face, but he could hear the creak of the zeppelin around him and he could see the sky and it was enough.

“See that? It says how high we are. And if you turn this, it should get us higher. Go on…give it a try.” Cautiously, as if she expected Lee to make her stop at any moment, Lyra did. Then she gave a whoop when they all felt the pressure from rising. Lee grinned.

This was what living was. A sky and a balloon. And good friends.

‘We could keep her’ Hester’s voice whispered in his mind, and for a moment his smile faltered.

‘Live for the moment’ he whispered right back, and forced his smile back full force. One day soon, they would land and he would give Lyra and Pan back to their father. But for now, they flew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...the TV series continues...and gives Lee a completely different background from the one I have implied here. As far as I can see there are a few ways one can look at it:   
> 1\. This universe's Lee is not that universe's Lee despite them being similar; the childhoods do not have to match.   
> 2\. the TV and books are different and this story is more in line with the books.   
> 3\. Alternatively, this Lee does have the same backstory as TV Lee but because he always saw his dad's abuse as 'deserved' he does not view it in the same way as getting beaten up or whipped by his peers. So he does not call it ‘being beaten’ despite literally being beaten. He locks it away in a different category completely, along with all the fights he’s gotten into and lost over the years. 
> 
> Look at it however you prefer but I'm certainly not rewriting half this story to fit the new TV canon.


	19. Chapter 19

It took one week. With Anna Koskinen and the two witch daemons, there was little chance of getting lost again or having to fight against the wind. In fact, the only reason it was so prolonged was because the pilot had a need for frequent rests, and because Lee insisted on following the curve of the land rather than the shorter distance across the sea.

“I can keep us straight through the night while all rest,” Anna Koskinen offered. “I would wake you if there is need. We could make the crossing quickly and I will make sure the winds stay in our favor.”

“Thank you,” said Lee Scoresby, “But if it’s all the same to you, we’ll anchor ourselves at night and stick to the land. I promised to get Lyra to her father safe and sound, and there’s no need to take our chances when a little longer to travel will do the trick.”

The witch had pouted all the while they settled themselves for the night, making sure they would not drift, for they did not dare ground the zeppelin in case it never rose again.

“I can pilot it when you need a rest,” Lyra offered, momentarily forgetting that she was not in a hurry to get anywhere in her excitement at the prospect of flying a zeppelin.

“For a bit,” Lee agreed, to her surprise and delight. And he did let her ‘take control’ while he leaned back and watched, ready to correct novice hands should the need arise (and it did, a time or two, but once a zeppelin is airborne and facing the right direction, the act of flying is actually quite boring) but when he felt the actual pull of sleep Hester would paw at him before he could tumble and then he would call for a break in the flight.

“I suppose it’s a good time as any for a bit of a meal,” was his explanation. He fooled exactly no one, particularly when a ‘short’ stop for a bite to eat ended in him falling asleep for a couple of hours, but no one called him on it. Not even Anna Koskinen, who Lee Scoresby had come to understand had zero personal boundaries and a deep curiosity in all of them, but even she was familiar with male pride (overly familiar, as it were) and did not feel the need to push.

Perhaps she was enjoying the journey too, and despite the way she pouted at the delays she did not truly feel a need to speed them on their way.

At any rate, the zeppelin could not be pushed too hard. By the seventh day, it flew low, like a dying balloon. It was low enough that Lyra whispered, “Shouldn’t we rise…just a bit?”, not wanting to dispute Lee’s skill as a pilot so the others could hear but feeling it had to be said.

“Sure we should,” Lee answered calmly, not offended in the slightest. “But we haven’t the fuel for it. Enough to get us above the ground, and the witch’s wind helps, but if we went up we’d be down again within an hour or so.” And, because Lyra was ever curious, Lee pointed out the gages that told him so, along with a less satisfying, “When a pilot knows the ship, he knows what she can do. We’ve gotten to know each other these past days, haven’t we?” He patted the side of the zeppelin. “She’ll get us there, alright, as long as we don’t push.”

And that afternoon Lee finally did give it some lift. They were over the ocean, lower than he was comfortable, but high enough to not feel the spray of the icy water.

“If we need to lose some weight,” Iorek said, “I will leap over the side and swim. I am at home in the water and the cold will not harm me.”

To Lyra’s shock, Lee answered with, “I might just take you up on that.”

“And I will fly myself,” Anna Koskinen said. “I can fly the child too, if necessary.”

“I might take you up on that as well,” Lee agreed. To that Lyra frowned.

“And how will _you_ get out…if the zeppelin sinks?” she demanded.

“She won’t sink,” Lee answered, reaching over the pat the side of the ship again. “I’d never have tried the crossing if there wasn’t enough left to get us there.”

Nova Zembla was an island, of course, so crossing the ocean in some way or another was necessary, but there were ships that could give them passage if need be. Granted, they did not have much to offer to pay for that passage, but Lee would have found a way. Despite being certain of the zeppelin’s capabilities, he was still nervous. The water below, this far north, was dotted with ice. The only one who could be assured survival in a crash was a polar bear.

In the end, Iorek did not have to take a swim. The distance to the island was not great, Anna Koskinen’s wind sped them on, and it was not yet evening when they were over land again.

There was not much to be seen by way of civilization in Nova Zembla.

“There’s a hotel,” Anna Koskinen told them. “The observatory is up a mountain to its north. That is where Lord Asriel was working when I left him.”

“What do you think?” Lee Scoresby asked. “Straight up the side of the mountain to the observatory, or stop at the hotel?”

It turned out not to matter (though Lyra immediately, and somewhat nervously, said ‘hotel’, not feeling ready to see her uncle turned father so suddenly). The zeppelin was not up to a climb up a mountain; it was barely up to the rise towards the hotel. In fact, they were forced to make a landing before even that was reached. It was a mountainous region, rocky, and colder than Lapland had been. They were both further north and higher up. Lee touched them down before gravity could crash them. There was still a bit of a thump at the landing.

“I think this is your best crash yet,” Hester remarked, once everything had settled enough for her to sit up without danger of being thrown down. Again.

“If I’d’ve crashed us, you’d _know_ we were crashed,” Lee answered, indignant. Then, with rather more contriteness, “Everyone alright?”

“I didn’t think the land would come up so fast,” Lyra said, sounding more thrilled than rattled.

“I thought you could fly this thing,” Anna Koskinen said, sounding more rattled and less than thrilled. It was the most annoyance Lee had ever heard her intone and he eyed her nervously. It did not do to annoy a witch. They had a reputation for a rather questionable idea of appropriate retaliation to perceived slights.

“I think he landed brilliantly,” Lyra answered, Pan bristling into a hedgehog in their indignation.

“We are all uninjured,” Iorek said. “One of your better landings, Lee Scoresby.”

To that Lee grumbled something under his breath, glaring towards his old friend. Anyone who did not know Iorek would have thought the bear perfectly serious, and now Iorek gave Lee a wounded look for being glared at. Lee Scoresby did know Iorek, quite well, and recognized the amused glint in the bear’s eye.

Getting to the hotel was a bit of a walk, particularly if they wanted to bring Lee’s balloon, but with their end destination so close, Lee was reluctant to suggest another night in the wilderness.

“I suppose we could leave it all here…” he suggested, though he was uncomfortable with the idea of leaving something so important where anyone might find it. But even he had to admit that someone stumbling by chance upon the zeppelin or his balloon was unlikely; this was not a widely populated place.

“We will leave the zeppelin that is not ours, and I will pull the cart,” Iorek said, his tone not leaving any room for argument, and that is more or less what they did.

If there was one good thing about the last few miles, it was that, after a week of taking it easy, Lee was able to walk himself instead of being forced to ride. Not that the others did not try anyway.

“It is mostly uphill, Lee Scoresby,” Iorek pointed out.

“I’m ready to stretch my legs,” Lee answered, and that was the absolute truth. For the first time in a long time, the ache that comes with stretching felt good rather than painful. He was not ready for a marathon, but a short hike would do him good.

“You will tell us when you tire,” Iorek said, instead of insisting he not try.

“Of course,” Lee Scoresby answered, trying and failing to look serious instead of delighted. Iorek looked down at Hester.

“I won’t let him overdo it,” Hester promised, and at that Iorek nodded. Lee was too happy to finally be feeling up to anything and getting to move under his own steam to even be annoyed by that exchange. He tried, for half a second, to look put out, before it turned into a grin, and in the next moment he gave a whoop, jumping in the air, just because he could.

Lyra grinned and danced around with him, sharing in his joy of movement, not even put out when Anna Koskinen did the same.

“I will tell Serafina Pekkala of your recovery, Lee Scoresby,” said Kaisa, the daemon sounding pleased.

“Oh…are you leaving us?” Lyra asked. She could not have said herself why that troubled her. Pan and Hester seemed to like the bird, so she felt comfortable with him, but just as the witch had always both awed her and made her slightly nervous, so did the daemon, and she never felt particularly close to him. Perhaps it was that she felt safer knowing someone who cared was keeping watch. And he was a bit of a buffer between them and the other witch and daemon pair who had pushed their way into the party.

“Not yet,” Kaisa answered, to her relief. “I feel the need to see this through.”

“You will stay until we find my father?” Lyra asked.

“Until you are settled,” the bird answered.

The fact that they were now so close to her father left Lyra feeling a jumble of unpleasant emotions. There was excitement and a sense of joy in there, because it was Lord Asriel, the uncle she had worshiped for years. But mostly it was trepidation and fear, like the welling up of homesickness without ever having a home, because now that she knew what having a family could be like, she was not ready to give that up, not even for her actual family.

She did have a plan. It might even be a good plan.

They went slowly, in part because, largely recovered or not, Lee Scoresby had a ways to go to recover lost strength, and in part because the majority of the party was dragging their feet. Hester did whisper a time or two to Iorek, who called a halt for a rest, insisting he needed it for pulling a heavily laden cart uphill over rocky terrain.

It said a lot that Lee Scoresby did not call him on that. But it also said a lot that Hester’s whispering never led to Lee Scoresby having to give up the hike entirely to ride.

“Flying is…is everything,” said Lee Scoresby, “But it feels good to stretch my legs.”

They saw the hotel just when it was growing late enough that Lee had been considering calling a halt for the night after all; the wilderness was not a forgiving place to wander around in the cold and dark. He was reluctant, knowing they were close, but racing the sun rarely turns out well.

They saw it, and Lee still considered calling a halt. It was below them, what he judged to be at least another hour of walking, over rough terrain. There was a road leading to it, but they’d come up the wrong side for it.

“Is that a castle?” Lyra asked, eyes wide in delight.

“That’s the hotel…I think,” said Lee, who had never had a particular reason to visit it. It was grander than he’d expected in fact, thinking it would be more like a small village or outpost below the observatory, an out of the way place for out of the way travelers.

“That is the hotel,” said Anna Koskinen, smiling as if remembering fond memories. “Much nicer than Lord Asriel’s little place up the mountain.”

“We could camp here…go to it in the morning,” Lee suggested.

Iorek studied Lee closely.

“It’s not that I can’t go on, if that’s what we want to do,” Lee said quickly, guessing what the look was searching for. “Just…it will be dark before we reach it and…well. A grand place like that…it won’t care for visitors who don’t have much to offer in return.”

“Nonsense,” said Anna Koskinen. “We are a king, and the daughter of a lord, and a witch, and…”

Everyone looked at the witch while she considered Lee and Hester thoughtfully. The two were more amused by her grasping for a positive way to describe them than anything, but Lyra frowned indignantly.

“And our protector,” she finished for Anna Koskinen.

“Yes,” the witch decided, not seeming to notice the way the child still bristled at a perceived insult towards Lee. “And a fine protector. There is no reason to not seek out their finest beds this very night.”

“I will carry you, and we will reach the hotel in time,” said Iorek.

“Now wait a minute,” said Lee, “I never said I couldn’t walk the rest of the way.”

“You are able to walk,” said Iorek, “But I can walk more quickly still, and we need speed if we are not to wander in the dark.”

Lee opened his mouth to protest.

“He’s right, Lee,” Hester said, voice soft and low, just for him. “We can’t let Lyra down for your pride.”

It wasn’t just pride, Lee wanted to protest, but he did look towards Lyra, who was looking back as if she thought anything he decided was exactly the best thing to do and she would follow him. He swallowed his first answer.

“Fine,” he said, and then, because it had to be said, “Just for the speed, though. Not because I can’t walk any further.”

With a goal in sight, everyone moved more quickly. They went almost too quickly, in fact; Lyra skipped ahead, tripped over a loose rock, and would likely have rolled all the way down to the hotel had Pan not quickly planted himself as a hog and grabbed the back of her coat in his mouth.

“Why don’t you come up here and keep me company?” Lee suggested after that, once his heart returned to its normal pattern and he felt capable of talking in a normal voice.

“I could keep you company,” Anna Koskinen purred, flying up to his side on her bough.

“He don’t want your kind of company,” Lyra told her, with far more annoyance than Lee felt safe for the child to direct at the witch. But Anna Koskinen just laughed.

“Oh, I know he has no interest in that,” she said to the girl as Lyra scrambled up beside Lee on the cart, throwing an arm around him possessively while Pan leapt from a goat into a bird and fluttered down to her shoulder before settling as a ferret. “But we can still enjoy each other’s company.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea…all of us burdening Iorek like this,” Lee said more diplomatically, not wanting to expressly tell her that Lyra was quite right and he did not particularly want to cozy up next to her on the cart.

“I am not burdened,” Iorek said back towards them, sounding highly offended.

“There en’t room for all of us,” Lyra said.

“I won’t take up much,” Anna Koskinen promised, and as if to prove it, she settled herself at Lee’s other side, half curled around him. She smelt of mountain spices and felt warm and soft. Lee might even have found her comfortable there if he weren’t worried she was reaching for something different than simple closeness. Lyra openly glared, albeit from his other side where the witch could not easily see.

“Say…” Lee suggested carefully, “It would be nice if one of us were able to run ahead and let them know we were coming…to have things ready. Perhaps a meal prepared…hot water for baths…that sort of thing.”

“Me and Pan could run fast!” Lyra suggested. 

Lee worked very hard to not express how very much that was not going to happen. Instead, he said, “Oh…but we might need you here…to…” his imagination failed him. 

Lyra frowned, rebellious, until Hester whispered something to Pan, who in turn whispered to the girl. Her eyes widened. “Oh…yes, of course. I’ll stay right here.”

Lee eyed Hester, suspicious, but did not bother to ask what the hare had said. Hester likely wouldn’t tell him anyway, and if she did, Lee would likely feel the need to protest. And it had gotten what he wanted; Lyra wasn’t trying to break her neck running ahead of them.

“I could fly there in a twinkling,” Anna Koskinen pointed out. Then, just when Lee was hopeful she’d actually do it, “Or Aake could fly there and inform them.”

“Oh…perhaps that is not the best idea,” Lee said quickly. “People can be funny about seeing a daemon without a human.” Then, “You know, whoever did go down to inform them…that person would have first go at the food and hot water.”

“That is a thought,” Anna Koskinen said, and then she smiled, clapped her hands together, and said, “I shall bid them to prepare for our arrival.”

And she flew, leaving so quickly Lee almost missed her warmth; he was cold on that side now. They watched her fly. No wonder she had chaffed at their slow plodding journey; in her element she could slide through the air like a dolphin through a wave. There was something of beauty there that called to the aeronaut. It was not that he suddenly liked her more or wished for her to return, and he most definitely wanted nothing more intimate with her, but he could appreciate that she did have a beauty all her own.

“Oh thank goodness,” Lyra began to say, only for Lee to say more loudly,

“And are you going to keep us company then, Aake?” to the witch’s daemon, who had not followed the witch. Lyra closed her mouth quickly with a snap.

They reached the hotel after sunset, but before the full dark overtook them. The first of the stars shone sharp over their heads, and the air burned with cold.

The entrance was easy enough to find as the road led directly to it. There was a man waiting. He rather stared at Iorek, and Lee half expected a protest. Bears did not always get easy welcomes in human dwellings. But the man did nothing of the kind.

“Do come inside,” he said instead. “Your rooms are waiting.”

Whatever Anna Koskinen had said to them seemed to have left an impression.

“I can’t believe we’re staying in a castle,” Lyra said, jumping on her bed.

“And tomorrow, we can go up to Lord Asriel,” Anna Koskinen said, smiling to herself in anticipation. She had her own room; they all had their own rooms, but for the moment they had gravitated together.

Lyra dropped onto the bed, Pan leaping into her arms and cuddling close. Lee sat down next to her.

“He’ll be happy to see you safe and sound,” Lee said, not sure what else he could say to soothe away the nerves that had clearly filled her at the thought of finally joining with her father.

Lyra said nothing, but she scooted closer to Lee.

“All will be well, Lyra Silvertongue,” Iorek said. “And if all is not well, we shall make it well.”

That night, only Anna Koskinen and Aake made use of the separate rooms. Lyra and Lee slept close, and Iorek did not care for a bed in any case and made himself a space on the floor next to them. Kaisa chose to roost in their room as well. Morning would come soon enough.


End file.
